John Terborgh

John Terborgh: Professor of Biology at Princeton University. Director of the Center for Tropical Conservation at Duke University.

Species are the units of evolution. Diversity and the Tropical Rain Forest, 1992.

 

Nature reaches its fullest expression in the tropical forest, whether measured by sheer numbers of species or by the complexity of their interactions. Ibid.

 

If, as seems likely, we lose the tropical forest in another 30 years, then science will be irrevocably crippled. Ibid.

 

Every species of plant or animal lives within a circumscribed range of environmental conditions. Ibid.

 

Within a few decades, unperturbed nature will cease to exist outside of protected parks and reserves. Ibid.

 

As of 1990, most countries had designated less than 3 percent of their national territories as nature preserves, a figure that falls far below the 10 percent target urged by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Ibid.

 

. . . Natural Forest Management is the extraction of timber from stands of native trees composed of a diversity of species. Ibid.

 

The managed tropical forests of the future will generally be confined to the poorest soils and steepest slopes, where not even the most rudimentary forms of agriculture will be economically competitive. Ibid.