Invited views in basic and applied ecology - Tropical biodiversity loss and people - A brief review

Massive anthropogenic land use changes are taking place in the tropics. These changes have not only jeopardized native biodiversity but also people. Environmental apathy, corruption, poor natural resource governance, poverty and lack of conservation funding remain formidable challenges for conservation biologists. Any meaningful success in tropical conservation will, hence, need active collaboration by the civil society, biologists, social scientists, lawyers, funding agencies, national and multinational corporations, governments and non-governmental organizations. Concerted research efforts are urgently needed to understand the imperiled tropical biodiversity. (c) 2007 Gesellschaft fur Okologie. Published by Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.