During the past century, humans converted extensive areas of tropical forest into cultivated lands. Three distinct processes, each predominant during a different historical period, have driven the destruction of the forests. This review describes each of these deforestation dynamics: natural resource degrading poverty traps that predominated during the colonial era, new land settlement schemes that prevailed for two decades after decolonization, and finally, financialized, large enterprise dynamics that have predominated during the past quarter century.

The conversion of agricultural land to forest plantations is a major driver of global land‐use change, and considering that large portions of the planet are covered by forest plantations, understanding their impact on biodiversity is a research priority. The aim of our study was to quantify the long‐term response of two lizard species to the transformation of the matrix surrounding remnant habitat patches (from agricultural land to pine plantations).

For over a century the foundation of biological conservation has been the development of open space networks either through outright public land acquisition or appropriate management of private lands. Because both approaches come with significant trade-offs, it is critical to understand which species are found across various land ownership types so that policy tools and management actions can efficiently be targeted to do the most good.