Amphibians on African mountains are threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation, pollution, disease and climate change. In particular, there have been recent reports of declines of montane endemic frogs in Cameroon. Mount Bamboutos, although home to numerous species of endemic amphibians, has no official protection and its amphibian populations have so far not been studied quantitatively. We surveyed frog assemblages on this mountain along a gradient of forest modification over a 2-year period. Through visual encounter surveys stratified across forest and farmland, we found that threatened montane amphibian species are closely associated with forested areas, particularly the Critically Endangered Leptodactylodon axillaris and Endangered Leptodactylodon perreti, Astylosternus ranoides and Cardioglossa oreas. Using the updated inventory of amphibians, which includes species with broader ranges across Africa, we found 69% of amphibian species on Mount Bamboutos to be threatened. We did not record several species present in historical records, which suggests they may have disappeared from this mountain, including Cardioglossa pulchra, Phrynobatrachus steindachneri, Phrynobatrachus werneri, Sclerophrys villiersi, Werneria bambutensis and Wolterstorffina mirei. The pattern of change detected in the amphibian community is consistent with declines on other mountains in the country, with a loss of Phrynobatrachus, Werneria and Cardioglossa spp., but persistence of Astylosternus, Arthroleptis and Leptodacty-lodon. The observed relationships of land-use patterns and amphibian diversity suggest that ongoing land-use changes could extirpate the remaining montane endemic frog species, particularly L. axillaris and L. perreti. Preserving a network of connected forest patches is therefore critical to save the endemic amphibians of Mount Bamboutos.

Forest managers in developing countries enforce extraction restrictions to limit forest degradation. In response, villagers may displace some of their extraction to other forests, which generates “leakage” of degradation. Managers also implement poverty alleviation projects to compensate for lost resource access or to induce conservation. We develop a model of spatial joint production of bees and fuelwood that is based on forest-compatible projects such as beekeeping in Thailand, Tanzania, and Mexico. We demonstrate that managers can better determine the amount and pattern of degradation by choosing the location of both enforcement and the forest-based activity.

We use data from camera-trap surveys for tigers Panthera tigris in combination with spatial capture–recapture models to provide the first density estimates for the Sunda clouded leopard Neofelis diardi on Sumatra. Surveys took place during 2004–2007 in the Kerinci landscape. Densities were 0.385–1.278 per 100 km2. We found no statistically significant differences in density among four study sites or between primary and mixed forest. Because the data sets are too small to account for differences in detection parameters between sexes, density is probably underestimated. Estimates are comparable to previous estimates of 1–2 per 100 km2 from the lowlands of central Sabah, on Borneo. Data limitations suggest that camera-trap surveys for Sunda clouded leopards require traps spaced more closely, to increase the chance of recaptures at different traps. Nevertheless, these first density estimates for clouded leopards on Sumatra provide a benchmark for measuring future conservation impact on an island that is undergoing rapid forest loss.

Understanding exotic–native plant relationships within the context of landscape-scale environmental factors such as rainfall, topography, disturbance and forest structure, is important for distinguishing the role of invasions in native plant community change. In this study, the relationship between Lantana camara invasion and native forest understorey vegetation was described after accounting for environmental influences. Rainfall, terrain slope, altitude and fire frequency were measured from GIS layers, and tree density, dry above-ground L. camara biomass, and native plant abundance and species richness were measured in nested plots (four 1 × 1-m plots for grass, tree seedlings and L. camara within one 5-m-radius plot for tree saplings and herbs and shrubs within one 10-m-radius plot for trees) at 80 locations distributed across Bandipur Tiger Reserve, a tropical deciduous forest in southern India. Relationships between environmental factors and L. camara abundance were described using a multiple regression. Further, the role of L. camara abundance in explaining residual variation in native vegetation, after accounting for environmental influences, was described using linear models. Lantana camara abundance decreased with increasing tree density, supporting the notion that it thrives in disturbed forest with fewer trees. Whereas native tree seedling and herb and shrub density showed no relationship to L. camara abundance, both tree sapling density and grass volume decreased under L. camara biomass exceeding 2 kg m−2. These data suggest that, by association with grass decline and decreased recruitment of tree saplings, L. camara may be linked to the gradual transition of these tropical deciduous forests into exotic-dominated shrubland, and overall native biodiversity loss.

Tropical forest management is a quintessential interdisciplinary (ID) problem straddling the social-natural divide, and has attracted scholars from many disciplines. This paper is a review of the ID research on tropical forests with a view to understanding the challenges involved in doing ID environmental research in general and the manner in which they might be addressed. Research on two core interdisciplinary questions in tropical forest research, namely causes of tropical forest loss and degradation and its impacts on society, is analysed to illuminate issues facing ID researchers. The challenges stem from differences in implicit values, theories and epistemologies across disciplines, as well as the relationship between individual disciplines, the ID space and the wider applied research audience. Understanding the value-laden nature of terms such as forest loss and degradation leads to a multidimensional and multidisciplinary characterization of the impact of forest change on human well-being. The analysis of causes of change has been enriched by ID research in which forest outcomes are characterized explicitly in terms of their values, measured in terms relevant to these values and linked to chains of socioeconomic variables at the appropriate scale. Explanations from different disciplines may be reconciled to some extent by seeing each as partial and perhaps having context-specific validity, although some core tensions, especially between economists and anthropologists, remain. Insights from ID research have been unevenly internalized in the literature, pointing to the absence of a broadly shared ID space as a consequence of individual social science disciplines appropriating environment as a subject of study. Shifting from theory-driven to problem-driven research and re-engaging self-consciously in this applied ID space will be required to generate more rigorous and relevant ID research on forests.

The effectiveness of protected areas (PAs) has often been measured by comparing deforestation or land cover loss before and after PA establishment or within and outside the PA. Such evaluations ignore forest degradation or the decline in quality of the ecological values of the forest. Landsat image processing and geographical information systems were used to study forest cover changes in and around Popa Mountain Park (central Myanmar). Deforestation inside the Park was lower than outside the Park, but forest degradation, namely the net area that changed from dense forest to open forest, within the Park had grown at rates exceeding those outside the Park. The effectiveness of the PA was overestimated by adopting deforestation as the only indicator of conservation effectiveness. Forest degradation studies can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of PAs.

Natural forests on Java have been generally cleared and remnants are now confined to mountain areas Although legally protected, these forests are used by local people for products like firewood, timber and fodder Locally, such exploitation is carried out daily by hundreds of people, whose livelihood depends on forest products Using a landscape-guided approach, a 15,500 ha area of montane forest in East Java has been sampled and analysed at the sylvatic mosaic level Vegetation types, sociologic species groups and vegetation structure are described for landscape units The most accessible landscape units have the most degraded forest with basal area values < 15 m2 ha−1 and a canopy closure of < 20% The least accessible units have relatively undisturbed forest with basal area values of > 45 m2 ha−1 and a canopy closure of > 60% Human activities such as tree cutting have altered species composition and modified forest structure to such an extent that large stretches of forest have been replaced by woodland or shrubland Forest degradation is described as a human induced process in which basal area and canopy closure are ultimately reduced, in spite of regrowth Comparison with other forest areas on Java shows that degradation as a result of tree cutting is a widespread phenomenon

Indigenous people have widely been blamed for degrading South Asia's montane forest resources through the practice of shifting cultivation, yet some studies have revealed that indigenous people used forests in a sustainable way for centuries until external intervention. The history of external intervention in the forests of South Asia is more than two centuries old. The process of degradation of forest resources requires understanding of the political and social processes that condition access, control and management of the land and resources involved. The Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh, a part of the Himalayan region, underwent essentially the same socio-political and historical processes as many other countries in the region and had very similar experiences in forest management. By examination of policies and associated effects on CHT forest over the past two centuries, this paper reveals that the process of forest degradation in the CHT started during the British colonial period with the nationalization of forests, establishment of reserve forests (RFs), management of forests by government agencies and weakening of traditional institutions. The process of degradation was accelerated by: privatization of forest land for the promotion of sedentary agriculture, horticulture and rubber plantation; the construction of a hydraulic dam on the Karnafuli River; the settlement of lowland people; and the constant conflict between indigenous people and the Forest Department. The degradation of CHT forests is not only the result of traditional agricultural practices, but also of many other factors including inappropriate policies and programmes.

The endemic Fijian crested iguana Brachylophus vitiensis, categorized as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List, has been recorded from several islands in western Fiji. We conducted a survey for the crested iguana on 12 uninhabited and five inhabited islands in the Yasawa and Mamanuca archipelagos of western Fiji in September 2000. Night searches for sleeping iguanas along a total of 11.2 km of forest transects suggest that crested iguanas are either extremely rare or extinct on all of these islands. Although we collectively searched a total of 44 km of transect over 123 person hours, we located crested iguanas on only four islands: three small uninhabited islands (all <73 ha) and one large inhabited island (22 km). In July 2003 we resurveyed two islands identified as having the best potential for the long-term conservation of crested iguanas, and found that populations were continuing to decline. We suggest that the scarcity of crested iguanas on all islands surveyed is due to the combination of habitat loss and the introduction of exotic predators. All islands surveyed have free ranging goats, forest fires have occurred repeatedly over the last few decades, and feral cats are established on many islands. To reverse the population decline of this species immediate intervention is required on selected islands to halt continuing forest degradation and to clarify the effects of introduced predators.