The Latin America and the Caribbean region boasts abundant forest resources about 47 percent of the land and accounts for 22 percent of the world's forest area (FAO 2007). From 1990 to 2005, Latin America and the Caribbean lost about 64 million hectares of forest. Furthermore, the net forest area, from 2000 to 2005 continued to decline in Central and South America accounting also for the largest area loss (Di Bitetti et al 2003; FAO 2007). The leading cause of deforestation is the conversion of forestland to intensive agriculture. Within this scenario, all the native forests are suffering from intensive pressures that are threatening the biodiversity and persistence of the eco-regions in the short and long term. As a result of human induced pressures on these native forests, habitat quality and biodiversity are being degraded; fragmented and large areas of forest are being lost. In all, the region's biodiversity is facing significant and growing threats. Many forests have already passed a threshold beyond which recovery is impossible (Newton 2007). The present situation is rather distressing, calling for the protection of remaining forest areas. Despite the actual rate of deforestation in South America, vast areas of intact tropical and temperate forest still remains and an urgent need for conservation measures needs to be targeted in such areas. On the other hand, to achieve a sustainable forest management, tools for assessing the forest system as a whole are needed. Not only protection of the remaining native forest is needed but also a sustainable management of forest and forestry operations is needed. To demonstrate the contribution that Landscape Ecology can make to forest management and to the understanding of forest fragmentation and biodiversity loss in the native forests of South America a review of the state of the art and gaps in research for the region will be presented. The work builds upon an initiative that started in 2006 to evaluate the status of native forest fragmentation in the region (Pacha et al 2007). Landscape ecology provides the holistic approach needed to consider biodiversity value at the same time as the needs for forestry activities. We address forest conservation and management initiatives from different regions in South America that present contrasting realities but a commonality in the need for sustainable landscape management.