Big Corporations Driving New Wave of Tropical Deforestation

Large companies, rather than subsistence farmers and settlers, are increasingly responsible for the destruction of rain forests, a development that paradoxically may improve prospects for conservation. That’s the conclusion of an article in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, which said that logging, mining, and agricultural corporations are now the prime drivers of deforestation, in large part because of a recent boom in global commodities. One of the authors, William Laurance of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, said this development gives environmental groups clear targets that can be pressured into being more environmentally responsible.