Protecting standing Amazon forest delivered the largest modelled biodiversity benefit

What you need to know

• The researchers compared three approaches: avoiding deforestation, avoiding disturbances in standing forest, and restoring cleared land. The analysis used observed and counterfactual outcomes, field assessments and high-resolution remote sensing in the Brazilian Amazon. 1
• Avoiding fire and logging in existing forest produced the largest biodiversity benefit among the individual strategies. Independent reporting puts the avoided biodiversity loss at about 68.5% in the study landscape. 34
• Preventing deforestation also benefited biodiversity, but the reported effect was smaller than that of avoiding disturbances to standing forest. Restoration alone made a smaller contribution in the comparison. 34
• Restoration still had a role, particularly in places where much forest had already been lost, according to the study summary. The findings therefore distinguish between protecting what remains and repairing cleared land, rather than presenting one as a universal replacement for the other. 2
• The strongest overall gains came from combining interventions. The study abstract says combined approaches were essential to reverse biodiversity and carbon losses, while the reported comparison also found protection of standing forest to be more cost-effective than restoration. 12

Why this matters

The results highlight the conservation value of preventing damage to existing tropical forest, alongside restoration where forest has already been cleared. For practitioners weighing approaches, the study suggests that protecting standing forest and restoring degraded or cleared areas can play complementary roles. The findings offer evidence for those choices, but do not demonstrate that the modelled benefits have been achieved in practice. 12

What happens next

The reporting identifies no planned intervention or implementation timetable. Open questions include whether the findings transfer to other tropical forest frontiers, how longer-term monitoring or disturbances missed by satellites might affect the comparison, and what policies and enforcement would be needed to deliver the modelled benefits. 3

What we know

• The research examined two regions in Pará, in the Brazilian Amazon, rather than a range of tropical forest frontiers. 1
• Its comparison drew on observed and counterfactual outcomes, field assessments and high-resolution remote sensing. 1
• The study assessed biodiversity and carbon outcomes, and reported that combining strategies produced the strongest overall gains. 12

What we don't know

• The supplied reporting does not establish how well results from the two Pará regions apply to other tropical forest frontiers with different fire regimes, logging pressures or restoration costs. 3
• It remains unclear how longer-term monitoring, or accounting for disturbances that satellites may miss, would change the comparison. 3
• The reporting does not specify what policies or enforcement would be required to achieve the estimated benefits in practice. 3

Read the reporting

This WildNews briefing synthesises and summarises reporting from the sources below. WildNews did not produce the original reporting. Learn more about how we use AI