GoKawiilarising from: R. A. Wiebe & D. S. Wilcove. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08569-5 (2025).
Wiebe and Wilcove1 provide an important and timely analysis on how outsourced deforestation causes biodiversity loss. Yet, we are concerned that their analysis wrongly attributes forest loss through shifting cultivation to international commodity trade, leading to erroneous conclusions on where developed countries inflict harm on vertebrates in distant countries. We illustrate this using their own key example, vanilla exports from Madagascar, which we show is not responsible for species’ range losses, building on substantial evidence on shifting cultivation and commodity cropping in Madagascar. We further argue that a closer engagement with place-based research and local scientists could have avoided overestimating and mislocating the outsourced share of biodiversity loss, reducing the risk of misguided policies.