Restoring tropical forests from the bottom up

This is extremely good news, and I'm not surprised that Brazil is leading the way -- there's been a lot of research on native forest use in Brazil in recent years. (Our rediscovery of terra preta also originates with this work.)

> Moreover, Brazilian scientists and wood pulp producers are collaborating to test an innovative restoration model, in which fast-growing, economically valuable eucalyptus trees are interplanted with native species, and then the eucalyptus are logged for wood pulp after 6 to 7 years to offset initial planting costs (9). Early results suggest that the fast-growing eucalyptus forms a canopy that facilitates the establishment of a diverse suite of native tree seedlings in the understory; the native trees grow quickly after the eucalyptus trees are harvested. Other non-native, economically valuable species, such as pine, can facilitate native tree establishment in some tropical systems (15), suggesting this approach could be used more widely for forest landscape restoration.

So basically, they restore the ecology using immigrants ;)

Not related to the article, but a meta question about HN -- how has this stayed on the front page all day? It has 1 comment (before I posted this), and ~50 upvotes. I've seen much popular posts be buried much earlier.

Again, not disparaging the content, it's great, but this was peculiar.