| In Amazonia, the over-extraction of traditional timber species provides incentive for private landholders to maintain and enrich impoverished forests and agricultural fallows with important timber species. In their fields, fallows, forests and house gardens, smallholder farmers on the seasonal floodplain, the várzea, in Peru and Brazil optimize the production of a diversity of crops, manage forest resources, and maintain critical ecosystem services through an integrated system of production and conservation. One native tree, Calycophyllum spruceanum (Rubiaceae), is prominent in these production systems and natural forests, providing timber, fuelwood, and construction material for local and commercial use. This species, a fast-growing hardwood, is dominant in forests and fallows on the várzea accounting for up to seventy percent of stand basal area. Research on the population ecology of C. spruceanum (capirona in Peru, pau mulato in Brazil), coupled with information on local management techniques, provides insight into how smallholder farmers take full advantage of the species' ecological flexibility to produce timber and fuelwood, and highlights the ecological and economic benefits of managing a tree cover in a threatened ecosystem. This study highlights the silvicultural techniques farmers use to promote C. spruceanum, and other tree species. Its abilities for abundant natural regeneration, coppicing, rapid growth to both agricultural and fluvial disturbance afford this economically important tree species advantages for sustainable forest management. Smallholder farmers in Amazonia can contribute to the forestry sector through their sustainable production of both traditional and lesser-known timber species. |
