Protecting existing forests Outperforms Restoration for Amazon biodiversity

Researchers comparing conservation strategies across 3 million hectares of the Brazilian Amazon found that protecting standing forests from disturbance provides greater biodiversity benefits than restoring cleared land.

Leonardo S. Miranda of Lancaster University and a team including Joice Ferreira of Embrapa published the findings in the journal Science. They compared three different intervention types, protecting forests from disturbance, avoiding total deforestation, and restoring cleared land, against observed land-use changes to determine which methods most effectively preserved carbon and biodiversity.

The study showed that protecting forests from disturbance, which involves preventing fires and selective logging, reduced biodiversity loss by 68.5% and carbon loss by 46.8% compared to a baseline scenario. In contrast, avoiding total deforestation mitigated 60.8% of carbon loss but only 28.0% of biodiversity loss. Restoration of land that had already been cleared yielded the smallest gains for both carbon and biodiversity.

These results suggest that while restoration is often a primary focus for funding, protecting existing forest structures can be more effective for preserving species diversity. The researchers noted that no single intervention alone achieved net-positive outcomes. Instead, combining the avoidance of deforestation with the protection of standing forests from disturbance was required to increase biodiversity by 12% and carbon by 18% above 2010 baseline levels.

Joice Ferreira of Embrapa explained that restoration remains essential in areas where large tracts of forest are already gone, but it works best as a complement to protection efforts. The team also warned that restoration efforts are highly vulnerable to wildfires, as young trees lack the structural resilience of mature canopies.