Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

Working in the north-eastern Brazilian Amazon over an area larger than Wales, researchers from the University of East Anglia and Brazil's Goeldi Museum collected data on the distribution of 15 different groups of animals and woody plants. These included wellstudied groups such as monkeys, butterflies and amphibians and more obscure species such as fruit flies, orchid bees and grasshoppers.

Following an intensive effort of more than 20,000 scientist hours in the field and laboratory, they found that at least a quarter of all species were never found outside native primary forest habitat, a best case scenario according to the team, as all the forests studied were relatively close to large areas of primary forests, providing ample sources for recolonisation.

This is not the case in many other plantations and regenerating forests along the deforestation frontiers of South America and south-east Asia which are much further from primary forests, making recolonisation much harder.

Dr Carlos Peres, who led the UEA team, said: "Although the protection of large areas of primary forest is vital for native biodiversity conservation, reforestation projects can play an important supplementary role in efforts to boost population sizes of forest species and manage vast working landscapes that have already been heavily modified by human-use."