Enemies of the trees? Subsistence farmers and perverse protection of tropical dry forest

As deforestation and habitat degradation proceed worldwide, the elaboration of realistic policies to protect and sustain forests assumes increasing urgency. Experience from one area of threatened tropical dry forest illustrates, however, that staunch environmental regulation based on partial understandings can have strikingly contradictory effects. In this study from the Dominican Republic, extensive dialogue and field observation with local residents offered a glimpse beyond the obvious proximal causes of forest loss-the subsistence farmers and charcoal makers regularly seen felling trees-to important influences of their socioeconomic and legal contexts.