http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/faculty/duffy/arb/306-311/311.pdf

Several large regions of the world are plagued by

conservation problems shaped around a particular inherent

set of geographical, biological and human conditions which

have been operational for varying periods of time. Typical

of situations facing Latin America are the progress of

economic development in Amazonia with its attendant loss of

rainforest biodiversity, and the Central American

"hamburger connection" involving conversion of forests to

grazing land to support the export of cheap beef to the

United States. Characteristic of Africa is the struggle

with desertification in the Sahel and the terminally

desperate fuelwood crisis there. Europe has its centuries-

long history of urbanization and the deforestation of

Mediterranean lands to contend with, while the similarly

industrialized North American continent must deal with

large-scale wetland drainage, the effects of high-

technology terrain vehicles (swamp buggies, dune buggies,

snowmobiles, motorcycles) on the landscape, as well as

protecting the endangered cacti indigenous to the deserts

from overexploitative commerce.