The US government recently bought 50 000 acres of sugar cane land in the Everglades for conservation. Pressure is on third world countries to earmark land 'for conservation'. When Gabon declared 1.4 million acres of tropical forest at Minkebe as a protected area for lowland Gorillas the area of conserved land in Central Africa was extended to 10,000 square miles. With more land being turned to forest world deforestation fell to just 0.3 percent lost per year in the period 1990-95. Most of this was concentrated in the less developed world, as a result of the pressure of surplus populations on forestland. In the United States forestland is growing 5886 KM2 on average every year. In the European Union forests are growing 486 million cubic meters every year (Britain 2000, HMSO, p.463).
-- James Heartfield