Publication

Tropical forests continue to be deforested because forest owners believe they can earn more income through land uses involving forest conversion. A case study in a Mexican rainforest revealed that enrichment planting with the native tree species Pouter ia sapota ('mamey') is a management approach that can increase the commercial value of the forest enough to compete with these destructive land uses. Depending on the land value, planting more than 40-200 seedlings per hectare into the natural forest is expected to have a higher net present value than one hectare of existing cattle pasture. To arrive at this conclusion, we were able to project long-term tree growth and fruit production from a few years' increment measurements, based on a new method for estimating ages of tropical trees without annual growth rings. This approach facilitates rather rapid cost-benefit analysis of tropical forest management with native species. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.