By Timothy J. Killeen The creation of protected areas and Indigenous reserves offers the best hope for conserving the biodiversity of the Amazon; however, the management of the human modified landscapes will determine whether society protects the ecosystem services essential for the economic health of the continent. Models predict that an ecological tipping point will be crossed when about 25 per cent of the region’s forests have been converted to agriculture – just a few percentage points above the current level of eighteen per cent. When (if) that tipping point is crossed, the decline in atm…