It's more complicated, I'm afraid, then telling people to “leave the forests alone.” Places like Madagascar need international engagement to improve their food security, promote democratic institutions, and help them protect habitat *(and enforce those protections) while providing means of survival, like eco-tourism jobs. Left to their own devices, desperate people with little hope for the future will not have the same attitude towards trees that you do.

Jason - cool travel blog. You should turn some of your trips into Einztein projects.

For me, living in Italy, Baobab are beautiful and interesting trees even because they grow up only in Continents like Australia and Africa. They are named by Senegalese”Ancient trees” since they can live up to 5000 years. They can store up to 100000 gallons of water. They reach heights of 5 to 30 meters . They cannot survive deforestation . Only when the last tree will be smashed down, the river will be poisoned, the fish will be fished and the last animal will be killed, we will realize that we cannot eat money.