Tropical forests are recognized for their exceptional biodiversity related to the provision of vital ecosystem services. They are also highly vulnerable and threatened, primarily by agricultural development. Tropical forests are disappearing at huge rates and old-growth forests now only account for 25% of all existing tropical forests. In some tropical landscapes, growing deforestation and degradation of old-growth forests is paralleled by the increasing extent of secondary forest (SFs) that regenerates naturally on large areas of abandoned farmland. They represent a hope for sustainable forest future. However, within tropical landscapes SFs are themselves extremely vulnerable to land use changes, but also natural and human-induced catastrophic events, such as fires. SFs have lost their capacity to provide a high level of goods and services, and are located in highly dynamic and human-pressured landscapes, where they interact with competitive productive landscapes. Without appropriate silvicultural management to increase their economic value and restore their ecological functions, they often become degraded and are cleared for more short-term economically productive activities. We hypothesize that the nowadays context of the increasing demand for tropical timber is an opportunity for SF conservation, through active and productive restoration for timber production in tropical SFs. Promoting sustainable and diverse timber production -associated with other environmental services- in SFs is also a way to reduce logging pressure on the remaining intact primary tropical forests : this may be the most important reason to enhance active and productive restoration in tropical SFs. In the suggested flash talk, based on results and knowledge of different studies gathered in the special issue “Active restoration of timber production and other ecosystem services in secondary and degraded forests” ( Forest Ecology and Management), we show that timber species actually represent an