Ecotourism is more profitable than other ventures like cattle ranching, timber logging and farming, researchers have shown for the first time for a region of Peru. The findings are likely to give local people the financial incentive to keep neighbouring virgin rainforest pristine, helping to lock away carbon.

Clear-cut swaths of the Amazon rain forest in Quiandeua, Brazil, are often planted with manioc, or cassava, a shrub grown for its starchy root. Farmers slash-and-burn large parcels of forest every year to create grazing and crop lands, but the forest's nutrient-poor soil often renders the land ill-suited for agriculture, and within a year or two, the farmers move on.