The truth from Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
“I am gravely concerned about what is happening with tropical
forests,” William Laurance, a researcher with the Smithsonian Tropical
Research Institute in Panama told AFP. “There is a very high rate of
destruction of the old growth, ancient forests.” He said the
equivalent of 50 football pitches of virgin rainforest was being
destroyed every minute amid global warming, large scale habitat
fragmentation, and changes in rainfall. Intense hunting in areas of
the tropics was also leading to the disappearance of “hundreds of
species of amphibians,” he said.
“Now we have synergy among those
different threats,” Laurance said. “So when you talk about global
warming for example because it’s getting hotter, species in the
tropics, where it’s possible, will naturally try to move up to higher
elevations where it’s a little bit cooler. “In many cases they will
be trapped by habitat construction, cattle pass, degraded lands,” he
warned. Laurance is one of the authors of a report presented Monday to
a conference organized in Washington by the Smithsonian Natural
History museum. “Indonesia is now in terrible shape, losing more than
two million hectares (4.9 million acres) of forest per year. Borneo is
being devastated,” he said. More than half of the planet’s 20 million
square kilometers (eight million square miles) of rainforests has
already been cleared for human use, while another five million square
kilometers (two million square miles) has been selectively logged,
said Greg Asner from the Carnegie Institution. But he said major
swathes of land, or some 350,000 square kilometers (140,000 square
miles), have been abandoned by human inhabitants and are beginning to
grow back. “Moreover, the regrowth is relatively quick. The forest
canopy closes after just 15 years. After 20 years, about half of the
original biomass weight has grown back,” he said.
http://www.grist.org/news/2009/01/12/tropicalforests/index.html?source=daily
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