As a result, firms adopted the standard, vowing not to harvest or buy timber harvested in any of these hotspots — areas such as southwestern China and Madagascar, which are rich in endemic species and endangered animals like the giant panda, the red panda and the lemur, but which have lost upwards of 70 percent of their original natural vegetation.

"The most effective way to conserve biodiversity in any place, but particularly in places where you have endemic species that have limited ranges, is to find ways of allowing the activities that people want to go on there to coexist with species," Skelly said.

In China and Madagascar, some native species have ranges so limited that "you could wipe entire species out much more easily than you can in temperate areas of the world like Europe and North America," he added.

That is bad news for China's snub-nosed monkeys and silver orioles and Madagascar's pink pigeons and ring-tailed mongooses.

But the rising tide of corporate concern is promising, Skelly said. "One of the things I've been encouraged by is that a lot of the people who are business leaders now grew up with this kind of environmental awareness, and they're not willing to let this go."

And protecting forests is important not just for wildlife's sake.

Prickett said it is also key to stemming climate change, since more than 20 percent of the world's annual carbon dioxide emissions come from the burning and clearing of forests.

The area of southwestern China that the Center for Environmental Leadership in Business is focusing on was damaged by heavy flooding and the clearing of forest land for agricultural use. Earlier replanting efforts saw significant die-off, Prickett said, because eucalyptus and pine trees were planted too close together, and they did not provide good habitat for local wildlife.

So the Center for Environmental Leadership in Business is working with local governments to regenerate the forests naturally and bring back native species, which should better protect the watershed, provide better habitat and sequester more carbon.

"Everything that we have seen indicates that the project is really exceeding our expectations," said Kathy Reed, staff vice president for environmental health and safety operations for 3M, the maker of Post-it Notes and Scotch tape.

Reed said the company saw it as "a triple hit for sustainability," as the program has good social and environmental consequences, in addition to protecting biodiversity and helping to stem climate change.

"It's so exciting to be able to think about making a difference," she said.

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Name: Giant Panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca)
Primary Classification: Ursidae (Bears)
Location: The Sichuan, Gansu and Shanxi provinces in central China.
Habitat: Temperate bamboo forests.
Diet: Bamboo, almost exclusively.
Size: Up to 6 ft in length and 250 lbs in weight.
Description: Black fur on ears, eye patches, muzzle, legs and shoulders; white fur everywhere else; thick, woolly coat; broad, round face and flat nose; large molars; round, protruding ears; round body with short, sturdy limbs.
Cool Facts: Mothers will eat their cubs' stools to eliminate any evidence of their presence, thereby avoiding potential predators. They need to eat more than 22 lbs of bamboo per day to satisfy their daily requirement of nutrients.
Conservation Status: Endangered
Major Threat: Habitat loss and poaching.
What Can I Do?: Visit Pandas International, Smithsonian's National Zoo and The Hong Kong Society for Panda Conservation for information on how you can help.

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