ABSTRACT
In every country there are government-supported colonization schemes often involving a crusade that seems aimed at eliminating all vestiges of woodland. The extent and state of the tropical forest at the time of the first European contact would have been dependent in large measure on the numbers of aboriginal peoples present in the warmer and wetter parts of the American lowlands. Extractive forest industries, based on distant export markets, have affected the composition of the tropical forest, especially in more accessible areas, since colonial times. Testimony as to the openness of the vegetation on tropical coasts at the time of the first European contact with the natives comes from many sources. Thus, Columbus describes the island of Santo Domingo as a vast and well peopled garden, "as fully cultivated as the countryside around Cordoba." The virtual elimination of man from the more accessible and more productive coastal lowlands was followed by rapid replacement of abandoned fields by woody growth.
