Green Reserves for Suriname.

• Author: Luxner, Larry
• Position: New nature reserve in Suriname - Brief Article

Huge investment in the timber, mining, and petroleum-extraction industries of South America is rarely viewed as a bad thing. But a new study by Conservation International (CD--especially in the three Guianas--warns that the region's most biologically rich ecosystems are being logged, mined, and drilled more rapidly than ever imagined. Between 1991 and 1996, for example, investment in minerals exploration in Latin America jumped 130 percent, from $300 million to $700 million per year. And in a 1996 survey of the chief executive officers of the world's largest mining conglomerates, seven South American countries were rated among the ten most promising over the next decade. Likewise, privatization of the timber industry--along with preferential trading agreements, heavy subsidies, and improved economic conditions--have made Latin America much more attractive to logging firms. In the last seven years, timber exports have risen 120 percent, from 1.4 million to nearly 3 million cubic meters.

"The sheer scale of investment, as measured by the number and size of concessions, threatens to open up of previously undisturbed natural areas," writes the study's author, Ian Bowles. "Secondly, the rate at which new concessions have been granted over just the last five years means that tiffs threat is an immediate concern for conservationists."

So perhaps the news out of Suriname--which has more rain forest than all of Central America combined--should make ecologists happy. Earlier this year, Surinamese president Jules Wijdenbosch announced that his government had established a four-million-acre nature reserve to safeguard the largely uninhabited virgin tropical forest.

"The people of Suriname are glad to invest in nature because we realize today that by protecting our tropical forests, we are also preserving our planet," Wijdenbosch said in a statement read at a June...