Smithsonian’s Symposium on Rainforest Survival Concludes
The recent Smithsonian’s Symposium: “Will the rainforests survive? New
Threats and Realities in the Tropical Extinction Crisis” had some
interesting observations. It brought together the world’s foremost
authorities on different aspects of rainforest science. One of the
main arguments put forward was that the extinction crisis might not be
as bad as predicted due to the significance of secondary forests and
other degraded landscapes, which may allow the preservation of certain
species.
Entomologist Nigel Stork from the University of Melbourne
argued that the scientists who predicted extinction rates of 50-75
percent did not take into account that certain groups of species, such
as birds and mammals, are more prone to extinction than other groups
like insects. Large body size, small restricted range, low number of
young, top of the food chain, high specificity to another organism,
and low physiological adaptation make a species more vulnerable to
extinction. One place where the scientists at the Symposium largely
agreed was the threat posed by climate change to the tropics and the
inability to know how it would affect biodiversity in the region.
All the participants believe that this is a much greater threat to
biodiversity in the tropics than habitat destruction. Tropical species
are much more sensitive to small increases in temperature than
temperate species. Tropical species would have to travel much greater
distances than temperate species to find habitat within their normal
range of temperatures. According to Gregory Asner of the Carnegie
Institution, deforestation is still the dominant pattern in tropical
forests worldwide. To be precise it is on the rise. With the
globalization of trade, deforestation mainly occurs for industrialized
agriculture, such as soy and palm oil, and for logging to produce wood
products meant for export to the West. Consumption by wealthy nations,
and not local needs, is largely driving contemporary deforestation. At
the end of the symposium all the speakers foresaw mass extinction in
the future of the tropics, unless drastic ameliorative actions are
taken on a war footing.
http://tahrcountry.blogspot.com/2009/01/worlds-tropical-forests-look-in-to-what.html
— Posted to http://forestpolicyresearch.com via gmail to posterous and
also to forestpolicyresearch@yahoogroups.com