{"id":2273,"date":"2026-07-25T21:00:03","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T21:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bkbc.net\/index.php\/2026\/07\/25\/unwritten-social-rules-not-government-oversight-help-keep-forest-land-sustainable\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T21:00:03","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T21:00:03","slug":"unwritten-social-rules-not-government-oversight-help-keep-forest-land-sustainable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bkbc.net\/index.php\/2026\/07\/25\/unwritten-social-rules-not-government-oversight-help-keep-forest-land-sustainable\/","title":{"rendered":"Unwritten social rules, not government oversight, help keep forest land sustainable"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Swidden agriculture\u2014often called &#8220;slash-and-burn&#8221;\u2014has been practiced on every inhabited continent throughout human history, and for decades it has been blamed for the destruction of the world&#8217;s rainforests. However, a new study of more than 18,000 forest patches around the world found that the environmental impact of swidden is more nuanced and less destructive than the term &#8220;slash-and-burn&#8221; suggests\u2014and that unwritten social rules in small societies, not government oversight, often regulate land use closely enough to support both harvests and forest regeneration sustainably over time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bkbc-attribution\">Originally published at <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2026-07-unwritten-social-oversight-forest-sustainable.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">phys.org<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"bkbc-source\">Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Phys.org &#8211; latest science and technology news stories<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Swidden agriculture\u2014often called &#8220;slash-and-burn&#8221;\u2014has been practiced on every inhabited continent throughout human history, and for decades it has been blamed for the destruction of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2274,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bkbc.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bkbc.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bkbc.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bkbc.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bkbc.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bkbc.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bkbc.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bkbc.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bkbc.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bkbc.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}