Forests: RUSSELL MITTERMEIER: Into the Woods

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Realizing that it's impossible to guard every tree in every place, Mittermeier and CI advocate a focused, two-sided strategy. One priority, based on the ideas of British conservationist Norman Myers, is to protect the world's "hot spots," areas that are disturbed by human activity but still exceptionally rich in animal and plant species found nowhere else. CI has identified 25 hot spots where preservation efforts could have maximum benefit, such as the island of Madagascar and the Atlantic forest region of eastern Brazil. The other priority is to watch over tropical wilderness areas relatively untouched by people, including the upper Amazon region of South America and the Congo basin in Central Africa.

In both hot spots and wilderness regions, CI pushes for the demarcation of key reserves that will forever be off limits to agriculture and industry. But just as important is the nurturing of other territories where healthy forests and human enterprise can coexist. CI has a simple message for developing countries: Your forests are more valuable intact and alive than they are chopped down and dead. Profits could come, for example, from the marketing of exotic foods, chemicals and medicines found only in the rain forest and from the largely untapped potential of ecotourism.

No place is wilder--or more worth saving--than Suriname, a country with only 400,000 people in a territory the size of New England. Mittermeier holds a special affection for this remote wedge-shaped corner of South America. It is where he did his doctoral research, and lately it's the site of his greatest success. Last spring, at CI's urging, the government decided to create the Nature Reserve--about one-tenth of the entire country. CI set up a private trust fund, with contributions from around the world, to help Suriname guard and manage the protected area. Outside the reserve, CI has worked with local Maroon tribes to limit farming to certain slash-and-burn areas and not disturb most of the forest surrounding their villages.

It takes barely 15 minutes for a small prop plane to carry Mittermeier and me from Suriname's capital city of Paramaribo south into pure wilderness. We survey enormous stretches of green, both breathtaking and monotonous. The green is in fact multicolored--brown-green, gray-green, yellow, smoke, even red. There are no roads, no human signs. We land at the base camp at Raleighvallen, where, with two guides from CI, we take a corjal--a long, slender canoe--to a point downriver. There we begin the three-mile trek to a camp near the Voltzberg Dome, a high eruption of granite that looks like an elephant half buried in trees, from whose summit one may gaze out over the wilderness.