Traditional Timber Harvesting in the Central Amazonian Floodplains 2010

Abstract

The science inspired awareness of the need to preserve and conserve tropical forests within the framework of protection of local and regional habitat and climate, plant and animal species and biodiversity, genetic resources and local livelihood gradually evolved over the past centuries until the issue has become one of the most important ecological and social challenges of our times. For centuries, the Amazonian floodplains have been used and settled by a human population of high density that carried out agriculture, pasture, fishing and hunting, as well as the extraction of timber, wood and non-wood forest products (NWFPs). Consequently, floodplain forests are one of the most stressed and threatened forest ecosystems in the Amazon. They are endangered by their conversion to agriculture and pasture as well by commercial exploitation by an expanding timber and plywood industry (Higuchi et al. 1994; Uhl et al. 1998).