Forests have to create jobs, products, services and income for those living in and around them. Touch them, and all sorts of, ecological catastrophes occur, sparking destructive chain reactions. But now there's abundant evidence that tropical forests are surprisingly hardy, perhaps no more fragile than any other terrestrial ecosystem. Tropical forests are dynamic. A patch of land portrayed as pristine, old growth forest may have been quite different 100 or 200 years before.
Trees fall, and other species grow.
Forests are subject to all sorts of natural occurrences that substantially modify them. These terms reflect a vision of tropical forests formulated from afar. There is also excessive pessimism in the international community, on the impact of forest 'fragmentation. The division of forests into very small parts probably does threaten their viability in the long term, but a degree of fragmentation is inevitable. If this occurs in a planned way with the retention of corridors and some large blocks of forest as has occurred in northeastern Australia-loss of species can be minimized.