Burning biodiversity: degradation by fuel wood harvesting

I want to dedicate this post to a discussion of a specific paper - which deals with an aspect of South American land cover change I am very interested in, and that has not been extensively studied. 
Specht, Pinto, Albuquerque, Tabarelli and Melo (2015)(here) provide us with an approximation of the potential impact of fuel wood harvesting in the biodiversity hotspot of the northern Brazilian Atlantic Forest. 

(source) Transportation of fire wood in Brazil, that is to be turned into charcoal and sold in local settlements.

Despite the high urbanization rate in Brazil, rural communities are growing with rising population patterns. Globally, a high percentage of the households use harvested fuel wood as their main domestic energy supply (Africa: 58%, Latin America 15%) and its usage is negatively correlated to income level. This study estimated local settlement fuel wood consumption ( in seven localities in the northern Brazilian Atlantic Forest) using a series of questionnaires to link consumption to other socio-economic variables - upon which a larger regional approximation was made. 
Generally, 76% of the households use fuel wood regularly and consume on average 686 kg/person/year of tree biomass. However, poorer people use 961 kg/person/year due to the lack of access to alternatives. The burning mechanisms is highly inefficient- explaining the high average per capita consumption.

Using this insight, we can evaluate the impact these patterns have on forest integrity. 
In the Atlantic forest region the rural settlers collect the fuel wood predominantly from remaining native forests - disrupting them by selective logging and pathways. Extrapolating these case study findings to the whole continent, where the natural forest is intercepted with small settlements, we can expect permanently human-modified landscapes to become the main habitat configuration across most tropical countries in coming decades (e.g. opinion here).
These chronic sources of forest integrity disturbance have been widely underestimated by management strategies. The cumulation of all small-scale harvesting practises across the remaining forest cover, however, have (other than many other land cover changing practises) no market forces as drivers. Fuel wood harvesting is primarily a subsistence practise and driven by poverty and access to other alternative energy sources. This issue is a perfect example of how international biodiversity conservation cannot be fully successful without accounting for the full complexity of drivers. In an "overpopulated" world, these indirect socio-economic  impacts will only intensify and should not pushed away as an unrelated problem by forest management.