Existing hydroelectric dams in Brazilian Amazonia emitted about 0.26 million tons of methane and 38 million tons of carbon dioxide in 1990. The methane emissions represent an essentially permanent addition to gas fluxes from the region, rather than a one-time release. The total area of reservoirs planned in the region is about 20 times the area existing in 1990, implying a potential annual methane release of about 5.2 million tons. About 40% of this estimated release is from underwater decay of forest biomass, which is the most uncertain of the components in the calculation. Methane is also released in significant quantities from open water, macrophyte beds, and above-water decay of forest biomass.

Social Forestry (SF) schemes have been implemented in India since the 1980s to combat deforestation, increase the supply of fuel-wood and fodder, and provide minor forest products for the rural populaton. The relevance of such Schemes in the Mayurakshi River Basin is basically due to its environmentally degraded state. Latterly the Basin has been brought under the Mayurakshi River Valley Project, but unless measures are undertaken to mitigate problems of soil erosion, the efficiency of the Project will be hampered.

Early detection of forest degradation may help to compensate for the time-lag that often exists between recognition of poor stewardship and the policy-changes required to mitigate such negative impacts. We report here on an International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) pilot study in Uganda.

The watershed of the Upper Napo River (UNR), in the western portion of Napo Province in Amazonian Ecuador, holds one of the most species-rich tropical forests known on Earth. It is an area in which agricultural development and associated forest destruction are at loggerheads with conservation of biodiversity. This essay briefly describes the major factors that influence and threaten biodiversity in the UNR watershed.

The discussion above illustrates the inadequacy of many of the development strategies that have been pursued in Northeast Thailand. The prevailing social, political, and economic, policies and trends have resulted in the transformation of the people of the Northeast from a relatively self-sustaining population to an increasingly impoverished one. In the course of the movement away from relatively self-sufficient subsistence-oriented production, they have been exposed to both the ‘rigours of the market’ and changing policies regarding access to markets, cash-crops, and land tenure — with all of their destabilizing, and in this case impoverishing, effects. This transformation has resulted in increased land degradation and rural poverty in the Northeast.

The concept of chance discoveries — serendipity — has been examined with respect to ex situ conservation of ‘reserved’ trees in Tanzania, where selection has little regard to climatic matching. Support for such departure from traditional practice is offered by the introduction, and subsequent growth, of Maesopsis eminii Engl. in the East Usambaras, and by the growth of the dry-savanna Acacia sieberiana DC. var. sieberiana and A. seyal Del. at Lushoto, in a wetter and cooler ecozone.

People of diverse cultures appreciate and observe wildlife. With the increase in the importance of economic, social, and aesthetic, values of wildlife comes the responsibility for wise management and use of these resources to ensure biodiversity and the continued wellbeing of the populations. We describe several ways in which ecotourists affect the behaviour, reproductive success, and population levels, of breeding and migratory birds in New Jersey — a heavily industrialized, coastal US state with a dense human population. We use several case-studies to illustrate the effects of ecotourists on birds: heronries, breeding Least Terns (Sterna antillarum), foraging Piping Plovers (Charadrius melodus) during the breeding season, migrant shorebirds and gulls at Caven Point and Delaware Bay, and migrant hawks at Cape May.