Moreover, had developing countries been able to realise significant carbon-trade values for natural forests under the first round of the Kyoto protocol, incentives to keep those forests intact would have been much strengthened.

ECONOMIST: Conflict of opinion

The emphasis on restoring forests would complement work on preventing deforestation in the first place.

CNN: Forests size of Russia 'could be restored'

Wolfe has spent much of the last decade tracking subsistence hunters in the rain forests of Cameroon, first as a young researcher at Johns Hopkins University, then at UCLA and now with his global forecasting group.

FORBES: Ideas & Opinions

That bought new transport planes and helicopters for the air force, and M-777 howitzers and heavy-armoured transport trucks and engineering vehicles for the army, the better to withstand roadside bombs. (The navy has been less fortunate.) The first Canadian soldiers to arrive in Afghanistan in 2002 wore green camouflage designed for forests, because the army had sold its sand-coloured uniforms.

ECONOMIST: Canada's armed forces

But the forests began to be cleared voraciously with the invention first of safety matches and then of wood-based paper.

ECONOMIST: Forests

It has rampaged eastwards into northern Alberta for the first time. (It has also made localised attacks on forests in all 11 western American states.) Scientists now fear the voracious beetle is about to invade the jack pines of the boreal forest, which could see the plague sweep across northern Canada to the Atlantic coast.

ECONOMIST: Pining for a cold winter