By Jeremy Hance, mongabay.com

Protected areas in the world’s tropical rainforests are absolutely essential, but one cannot simply set up a new refuge and believe the work is done, according to a new paper in Bioscience. Unsustainable hunting and poaching is decimating tropical forest species in the Amazon, the Congo, Southeast Asia, and Oceana, leaving behind “empty forests,” places largely devoid of any mammal, bird, or reptile over a few pounds. The loss of such species impacts the whole ecosystems, as plants lose seed dispersers and the food chain is unraveled.

“In many parts of the tropics, hunting is now the biggest threat to tropical biodiversity,” writes the paper’s author, tropical ecologist Rhett Harrison. “There is a need to acknowledge the unpalatable but undeniable fact that current tropical conservation efforts are failing.”

Currently around 18 percent of the world’s tropical forests are under some level of protection, a statistic that is seen as a measure of success by conservationists, however hunting and poaching remain rampant. Although most severe in Southeast Asia and Africa, concerns are also rising in the Amazon as well.

Harrison argues that small protected areas and those that do not possess big charismatic species—such as jaguars or elephants—are especially vulnerable to poaching activities due to long neglect from conservationists and policy-makers.