Stable Forest Cover under Increasing Populations of Swidden Cultivators in Central Laos: The Roles of Intrinsic Culture and Extrinsic Wildlife Trade

Abstract

"Swidden agriculture, or shifting cultivation, is variously viewed as a great environmental threat or a sustainable system of land use. In Laos, swidden has long been considered the primary driver of forest loss nationwide, but the assessment is based exclusively on studies from the north of country, where deforestation is most severe. National policies to control swidden have percolated down to management of one of the largest nature reserves in the region, Nakai-Nam Theun National Protected Area (NNT NPA) in the Annamite Mountains of central Laos. In NNT NPA, swiddens presumed unsustainability and deleterious impact on forest cover is an untested assumption. We tested it by methods of historical ecology, tracing the patterns of NNTs forest cover and human settlement over the past several decades. Principal sources of data were topographical maps dating to 1943, and Landsat images from 1976, 1989, and 2001."