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To forestall a mass extinction, fight forest fragmention Updated for 2026

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Much of the Earth was once cloaked in vast forests, from the subarctic snowforests to the Amazon and Congo basins.

As humankind colonised the far corners of our planet, we cleared large areas to harvest wood, make way for farmland, and build towns and cities.

The loss of forest has wrought dramatic consequences for biodiversity and is the primary driver of the global extinction crisis. I work in Borneo where huge expanses of tropical forest are cleared to make way for palm oil plantations.

The biological cost is the replacement of some 150 forest bird species with a few tens of farmland species. But forest is also frequently retained inside or at the edges of oil palm plantations, and this is a pattern that is replicated globally.

The problem, according to new research published in Science Advances, is that the vast majority of remaining forests are fragmented.

In other words, remaining forests are increasingly isolated from other forests by a sea of transformed lands, and they are found in ever-smaller sized patches. The shockwaves of loss thus extend far beyond the footprint of deforestation.

Accessible forests

The team, led by Nick Haddad from North Carolina State University, used the world’s first high-resolution satellite map of tree cover to measure how isolated remaining forests are from a non-forest edge. Edges are created by a plethora of deforesting activities, from roads to cattle pastures and oil wells, as well as by rivers.

They found that more than 70% of remaining forest is within just 1km (about 0.6 miles) of an edge, while a 100 metre stroll from an edge would enable you to reach 20% of global forests.

Comparing across regions, the patterns they find are even starker. In Europe and the US, the vast majority of forest is within 1km of an edge – some of the most ‘remote’ areas in these regions are a stones throw from human activity. ‘Getting away from it all’ has never been more challenging.

If you want remote forests on a large scale you’ll have to head to the Amazon, the Congo, or to a lesser degree, central and far eastern Russia, central Borneo and Papua New Guinea.

Biodiversity reduced

These findings wouldn’t be cause for alarm if wildlife, forests, and the services that they provide humankind such as carbon storage and water, were unaffected by fragmentation.

However, by drawing together scientific evidence from seven long-term fragmentation experiments, Haddad and colleagues show that fragmentation reduces biodiversity by up to 75%. This exacerbates the extinction risk of millions of forest species, many of which we still don’t know much about.

Forest species struggle to survive at edges because these places are brighter, windier, and hotter than forest interiors. Edges become choked by rampant vines and invaded by disturbance-tolerant, parasitic or invasive species that outcompete the denizens of dark forest interiors.

In Borneo, for example, small forest patches house bird communities that are far more similar to those found in the surrounding oil palm than to those of larger forest tracts.

The survival of large, carbon-rich trees – the building blocks of any intact forest ecosystem – is reduced in smaller and more isolated forest fragments. These patches thus fail to maintain viable populations, which over time are doomed – an ‘extinction debt’ yet to be paid.

With so much global forest in close proximity to humans, larger forest animals such as chimpanzees, gorillas, tapirs or curassow birds are being hunted to extinction in individual areas. This shifts animal communities within the forest fragments to one dominated by small-bodied species.

Further, hunters are willing to penetrate forests for several kilometres from edges in search of game, effectively making the truly wild global forest estate yet smaller.

Difficult management decisions

The insidious effects of fragmentation mean that the top conservation priority must be preventing further incursions into dwindling wildernesses. By preventing the first cut we can help to prevent global fragmentation and the further loss of biodiversity.

Of course, we should not ignore fragmented regions. Some of these, including the Brazilian Atlantic forest, Tropical Andes and Himalayas, share a toxic mix of hyperdiversity, endemic species with tiny ranges, and severe fragmentation.

The critically-endangered Munchique wood-wren, for instance, exists only in a handful of peaks in the Colombian Andes, but these are now isolated from each other by cattle pastures and roads. Here we must seek to restore forest cover and improve connectivity between larger fragments if we are to prevent extinctions.

However, the rapid expansion of human populations, greed, and meat consumption mean that more forest is likely to be lost, even if farm yield and efficiency can be improved to help bridge gaps between current and future demand.

The difficult question is where should this expansion happen? Given the severe degradation of small and isolated fragments, perhaps conversion could target some of these patches, coupled with wilderness protection and expansion.

Next time I visit my local National Park – the highly fragmented Peak District – I will spare a thought for the species that are being harmed by their habitats being broken up into ever smaller chunks.

There are no easy answers to the problems of fragmentation, but our forests urgently need a global management plan.

 

 

The paper: ‘Habitat fragmentation and its lasting impact on Earth’s ecosystems‘ by Nick M. Haddad et al is published in Science Advances (full paper / open access).

David Edwards is Lecturer of Conservation Science at the University of Sheffield.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Conversation

 




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Amazon carbon sink declines as trees grow fast, die faster Updated for 2026

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Tropical forests are being exposed to unprecedented environmental change, with huge knock-on effects. In the past decade, the carbon absorbed annually by the Amazon rain forest has declined by almost a third.

At 6 million sq.km, the Amazon forest covers an area 25 times that of the UK, and spans large parts of nine countries. The region contains a fifth of all species on earth, including more than 15,000 types of tree.

Its 300 billion trees store 20% of all the carbon in the Earth’s biomass, and each year they actively cycle 18 billion tonnes of carbon, twice as much as is emitted by all the fossil fuels burnt in the world.

The Amazon Basin is also a hydrological powerhouse. Water vapour from the forest nurtures agriculture to the south, including the biofuel crops which power many of Brazil’s cars and the soybeans which feed increasing numbers of people (and cows) across the planet.

What happens to the Amazon thus matters to the world. As we describe in research published in Nature, the biomass dynamics of apparently intact forests of the Amazon have been changing for decades now with important consequences.

Is climate changing the Amazon?

There are two competing narratives of how tropical forests should be responding to global changes. On one hand, there is the theoretical prospect (and some experimental evidence) that more carbon dioxide will be ‘good’ for plants.

Carbon dioxide is the key chemical ingredient in photosynthesis, so more of it should lead to faster growth and thus more opportunities for trees and whole forests to store carbon. In fact almost all global models of vegetation predict faster growth and, for a time at least, greater carbon storage.

Arrayed against this has been an opposing expectation, based on the physical climate impacts of the very same increase in atmospheric CO2. As the tropics warm further, respiration by plants and soil microbes should increase faster than photosynthesis, meaning more carbon is pumped into the air than is captured in the ‘sink’.

More extreme seasons will also mean more droughts, slowing growth and sometimes even killing trees.

Which process will win?

The work we have led takes a simple approach. With many colleagues, we track the behaviour of individual trees through time across permanent plots distributed right across South America’s rain forests.

Together with hundreds of partners in the RAINFOR network, this close-up look at the Amazon ecosystem has been underway since the 1980s, allowing an unprecedented assessment of how tropical forests have changed over the past three decades.

Our analysis – based on work across 321 plots, 30 years, eight nations, and involving almost 500 people – first of all confirms earlier results. The Amazon forest has acted as a vast sponge for atmospheric carbon. That is, trees have been growing faster than they have been dying.

The difference – the ‘sink’ – has helped to put a modest brake on the rate of climate change by taking up an additional two billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year.

This extra carbon has been going into ostensibly mature forests, ecosystems which according to classical ecology should be at a dynamic equilibrium and thus close to carbon-neutral.

Amazon trees are finding it harder to survive

However we also found a long and sustained increase in the rate of trees dying in Amazon forests that are undisturbed by direct human impacts.

Tree mortality rates have surged by more than a third since the mid-1980s, while growth rates have stalled over the past decade. This had a significant impact on the Amazon’s capacity to take-up carbon.

Recent droughts and unusually high temperatures in the Amazon are almost certainly behind some of this ‘mortality catch-up’. One major drought in 2005 killed millions of trees. However the data shows tree mortality increases began well before then. Some other, non-climatic mechanism may be killing off Amazonian trees.

The simplest answer is that faster growth, which is consistent with a CO2 stimulation, is now causing trees to also die faster. As the extra carbon feeds through the system, trees not only grow quicker but they also mature earlier. In short, they are living faster, and therefore dying younger.

Thus, 30 years of painstakingly monitoring the Amazon has revealed a complex and changing picture. Predictions of a continuing increase of carbon storage in tropical forests may be overly optimistic – these models simply don’t capture the important feed-through effect of faster growth on mortality.

Forests’ ability to store carbon is reducing

As the Amazon forest growth cycle has been accelerating, carbon is moving through it more rapidly. One consequence of the increase in death should be an increase in the amount of necromass – dead wood – on the forest floor.

While we haven’t measured these changes directly, our model suggests the amount of dead wood in the Amazon has increased by 30% (more than 3 billion tonnes of carbon) since the 1980s. Most of this decaying matter is destined to return to the atmosphere sooner rather than later.

More than a quarter of current emissions are being taken up by the land sink, mostly by forests. But a key element appears to be saturating.

This reminds us that the subsidy from nature is likely to be strictly time-limited, and deeper cuts in emissions will be required to stabilise our climate.

 

 

Published on #IntlForestDay, 21st March 2015.

Oliver Phillips is Professor of Tropical Ecology at the University of Leeds.

Roel Brienen is NERC Research Fellow at the University of Leeds.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

 

The Conversation

 




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Brazil’s ravaged forests are taking their revenge Updated for 2026

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Imagine this scenario: “The following is a Public Service Announcement by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, Division of Water, July 4, 2015:

“Because of low water levels in state reservoirs, the Division of Water proclaims a statewide water-rationing program. Starting next month, on August 1st 2015, water service will turn off at 1:00 pm on a daily basis for an indeterminate period of time. Service will return the following morning.”

Now, imagine a city the size of the State of New York with its 20 million people subjected to the same water-rationing plan. As it happens, São Paulo, de facto capital city of Brazil, home to 20 million, is such a city. The water is turned off every day at 1:00pm, as reported by Donna Bowater, The Telegraph‘s São Paulo correspondent, a week ago.

Brazil contains an estimated 12% of the world’s fresh water, but São Paulo is running dry. Fatally, the city’s Cantareira Water Reservoir (water resource for 6.2 million of the city’s 20 million) is down to 6% of capacity! The city’s other reservoirs are also dangerously low.

Perilously, São Paulo’s days of water supply are numbered.

What’s the problem?

Deforestation, the nearly complete disappearance of the Atlantic Forest and continuing deforestation of the Amazon, that’s the problem. Forests have an innate ability to import moisture and to cool down and to favor rain, which is what makes ‘regional climates’ so unique.

According to one of Brazil’s leading earth scientist and climatologist, Dr. Antonio Nobre, Earth System Science Centre and Chief Science Advisor, National Institute for Research in the Amazon, Brazil:

Or as Wyre Davies, the BBC’s Rio de Janeiro correspondent reported from São Paulo last November: “There is a hot dry air mass sitting down here like an elephant and nothing can move it … If deforestation in the Amazon continues, São Paulo will probably dry up.”

And according to Dr. Antonio Nobre, researcher in the government’s space institute, Earth System Science Centre (reported by the Guardian‘s Jonathan Watts last October): “Vegetation-climate equilibrium is teetering on the brink of the abyss …

“Studies more than 20 years ago predicted what is happening with lowering rainfall. Amazon deforestation is altering climate. It is no longer about models. It is about observation. The connection with the event in São Paulo is important because finally people are paying attention.”

Deforestation alters the climate – and not just via CO2 emissions!

São Paulo is Brazil’s richest state as well as its principal economic region. Sorrowfully, it may ‘dry up’. It could really truly happen because it’s already mostly there, right now, as of today. Where will its 20 million inhabitants go? Nobody knows!

The Atlantic Forest stretches along the eastern coastline of the country. A few hundred years ago, the forest was twice the size of Texas. Today, it is maybe 15% of its former self and what remains is highly fragmented. The forest harbors 5% of the world’s vertebrates and 8% of Earth’s plants.

Illegal logging, land conversion to pasture, and expansion of urban areas have put extreme stress on the Atlantic Forest. The same holds true for the giant Amazon rainforest.

Brazil holds one-third of the world’s remaining rainforests. In the past, deforestation was the result of poor subsistence farmers, but times change, today, large landowners and corporate interests have cleared the rainforest at an unprecedented rate. At the current rate, the Amazon rainforest will be further reduced by 40% by 2030.

Rainforests are the oldest ecosystem on earth and arguably one of the most critical resources for sustainability of life, dubbed ‘the lungs of the planet’.

In this month’s National Geographic magazine, Scott Wallace summarizes the plight of rainforests: “In the time it takes to read this article, an area of Brazil’s rainforest larger than 200 football fields will have been destroyed. The market forces of globalization are invading the Amazon.”

Yes, within 20 minutes, only 20, the Amazon rainforest loses the equivalent of 200 football fields. Americans connect with football. It is one of the biggest revenue-producing sports in history. And, that’s not all; football fields provide a good descriptive tool of dimensions.

In fact, 200 football fields are equivalent to the space required for 1,000 stand alone single-family homes, which means the Amazon rainforest loses equivalent to 72,000 stand alone single-family homes, or a small city, per day, everyday, gone forever. That’s a lot of rainforest gone day-in day-out, which ironically provides timber for building houses, but, in point of fact, most of it is burned away. Poof it’s gone, big puffs of smoke into the atmosphere.

“During the past 40 years, close to 20 percent of the Amazon rainforest has been cut down-more than in all the previous 450 years since European colonization began”, Wallace continues. “Scientists fear that an additional 20 percent of the trees will be lost over the next two decades into the atmosphere.

“If that happens, the forest’s ecology will begin to unravel. In fact, the Amazon produces half its own rainfall through the moisture it releases into the atmosphere. Eliminate enough of that rain through clearing, and the remaining trees dry out and die.”

Editor’s note: in fact, it maybe far worse than that – in the Amazon interior, new findings published today on The Ecologist – ‘Without its rainforest, the Amazon will turn to desert‘ – suggest that 99% of the rain is generated by the forest itself.

Rainforests are the world’s most valuable natural resource

Nature at work:

  1. The Amazon produces half of its own rainfall and most of the rain south of the Amazon and east of the Andes,
  2. rainforests sequester carbon by holding and absorbing carbon dioxide, thus, controlling global warming as it actually cleanses the atmosphere.
  3. rainforests maintain remarkable panoply of life with species not found anywhere else and provide medicinal products, like cancer treatment, and
  4. these spectacular forests produce 20% of the planet’s oxygen, every 5th breath murmurs “thank you rainforests.”

Rainforests cover less than 2% of Earth’s total surface area but are home to 50% of the plants and animals. That’s a lot of ‘bang for the buck’. Moreover, critical for survival, the rainforests act as the world’s thermostat by regulating temperatures and weather patterns, and they are absolutely necessary in maintaining Earth’s supply of drinking and fresh water.

For confirmation of the significance of that necessity, ask the residents of São Paulo.

As for the size of the world’s rainforests, “the original untouched resource of six million square miles of rainforests” has already been chopped down by 60%. Only 2.4 million square miles remains today.

Regrettably, according to Watts’s Guardian article: “Forest clearance has accelerated under Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff [since 2011] after efforts to protect the Amazon were weakened … satellite data indicated a 190% surge in deforestation in August and September [2014].”

Is the problem bigger than solutions?

“A paradox of chance”, claims Dr. Antonio Nobre: “Remarkably, there is a quadrangle of land in South America that should be desert. It’s on line with the deserts, but it is not a desert. It’s the Amazon rainforest.”

Based upon studies of the Amazon’s impact on climate, Dr. Antonio Nobre offers a solution to climate change / global warming, Rebuild Forests, yes, Rebuild’em! Here’s what he had to say in a TEDx talk back in 2010:

“We can save planet Earth. I’m not talking about only the Amazon. The Amazon teaches us a lesson on how pristine nature works … We can save other areas, including deserts, if we could establish forests in those areas, we can reverse climate change, including global warming.”

For example, fighting back, China is building a giant green wall, a tree belt, hoping to stop the Kubuqi Desert from spreading east along the front line of the huge Chinese Dust Bowl, the world’s largest dust bowl.

Fifty years ago, portions of this same eastern desert area were grasslands, growing crops, raising cattle and sheep. Today, windstorms from the Kubuqi send plumes all the way across the Pacific to the US West Coast.

Ergo, proof positive people do not need to stand by idly twiddling thumbs, watching human-caused climate change ravage countryside. Things can be done!

However, as for China, it may already be too late. In August 2013 Lester R. Brown wrote in the New York Times:

“Whereas the United States has 8 million sheep and goats, China has 298 million. Concentrated in the western and northern provinces, sheep and goats are destroying the land’s protective vegetation. The wind then does the rest, removing the soil and converting productive rangeland into desert. Northwestern China is on the verge of a massive ecological meltdown.

“The fallout from the dust storms is social as well as economic. Millions of rural Chinese may be uprooted and forced to migrate eastward as the drifting sand covers their land. Expanding deserts are driving villagers from their homes in Gansu, Inner Mongolia and Ningxia provinces. An Asian Development Bank assessment of desertification in Gansu Province reports that 4,000 villages risk being overrun by drifting sands.”

Thus, the most provocative question surrounding the global warming issue is: When is the problem bigger than solutions?

The global warming / climate change issue is much, much deeper and considerably more robust than this short essay depicts. It is a gargantuan monster that is likely already out of control with CO2 in the atmosphere at levels flashing warning signals going back hundreds of thousands of years, frightening real scientists but not enough to frighten the US Congress into instituting a nationwide renewables initiative. In fact, Congress is stiff and lifeless.

As it goes, the overriding climate change quandary consists of

  1. ‘fossil fuels ruling the world’
  2. COP’s (Conference of Parties aka; UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) ineffective endless meetings, ho-hum; and
  3. frankly, most of the people in the world don’t give a damn. End of story.

Meanwhile, with deforestation in the Amazon once again accelerating, hapless São Paulo may morph into a real life version of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (Warner Bros. 1981) – a dusty, dirty vision of the future where resources are hard to find and decent people turn nasty as desperate marauding groups battle for survival in the desert.

Maybe that’ll wake people up!

 

 

Also on The Ecologist:

Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at roberthunziker@icloud.com

This article was originally published by CounterPunch.

 




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Swedish wildlife extinction threat as loggers clear-cut ‘old growth’ forests Updated for 2026

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A camera follows a peregrine falcon as it swoops low over an attractive, pristine river hugged by trees in remote northern Sweden.

It then soars higher, revealing that the river flows through a large area which has been clear-felled of forest.

Stripped bare, it is as if an atomic bomb has been detonated over the land.

Aimed at raising public awareness, the message of the video by the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC) (see below) is clear: Sweden no longer looks like what you think.

While Sweden’s forest cover of 60% of the country’s land area is one of the highest in Europe, it is calculated that more than half of Sweden’s productive forests have been felled since the 1950s.

With paper, pulp, cardboard, and sawn timber comprising the main products of the forestry sector, much of it bound for European markets, the vast majority of the country’s forest landscape has been affected by intense forestry methods.

Dominated by five large companies (the largest of which, state-owned Sveaskog, owns 14% of the country’s forest) and a number of smaller landowners, the forestry sector has the rights to 96% of Sweden’s productive forests – land deemed as suitable for forestry.

Logging vs. old growth and biodiversity

With much of Sweden’s forest cover comprised of young forests not yet ready to be harvested, there is intense pressure to log Sweden’s remaining mature, old-growth forests – ‘natural’ forests so far only minimally affected by modern forestry and typically of great importance for the ecosystem and biodiversity.

Sweden no longer looks as you think – from SSNC / Naturskyddsföreningen on Vimeo.

I sit down with a worried Malin Sahlin, the SSNC’s boreal forest policy officer, in her office in Stockholm. “The country is going into the last stage of transformation in terms of forest ecology right now due to the fact we are clear-felling the last of our forests that have never been clear felled before … and turning the forest landscape, through replanting, pretty much into a monoculture”, she tells me.

The future for Sweden’s forests looks bleak. According to Sahlin, “if we continue today business as usual, there might in 20 years from now only be 5% of natural-like forests left and the rest could be in production.”

Sweden’s forest cover comprises part of the vast boreal forest that stretches across the northern part of the globe. Its old-growth forests are an important carbon sink that helps to regulate the earth’s temperature.

Not only this, but such forests typically contain a large amount of dead wood, which forms a crucial habitat for many species. A report by the WWF cites the severe lack of dead wood as constituting one of the main reasons for the loss of biodiversity in European forests.

Of over 20,000 species of flora and fauna assessed in Sweden according to IUCN criteria, around 20% are categorized as ‘red-listed’ (nearly half of which are threatened), with mature forests being especially important for many of those species.

Published every five years, the Swedish Species Information Centre in Uppsala is currently updating Sweden’s Red List, which is due to be issued in 2015. While pointing out that extinction processes in forest ecosystems are long term, Artur Larrson of the Centre argues that the current situation is “bad with a constant decline in species.”

Larsson further explains: “Typically more sedentary species like species like fungi, bryophytes and lichens are harmed most … but even more mobile species like birds, mammals and flying insects can also suffer from the extensive landscape change that forestry causes, for example a lack of dead wood of the right quality, lack of old and slow growing trees, denser and darker forests, and so on.”

Failures of regulation, protection and certification

In 1999 Sweden outlined 16 environmental objectives to be met by 2020 – one of which is sustainable forests. However, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency – the body tasked with monitoring the objectives – has deemed the objective as unreachable under current policy instruments.

With the forestry model based on the principle of ‘freedom with responsibility’, critics argue that the lack of clear and stringent legislation has led to this freedom being hijacked by irresponsible forestry practices.

As a report by the SSNC argues, “the Swedish forestry model involves clear-cutting as the default method, soil scarification, systematic use of chemicals, plantation forestry and the use of non-native species.”

Failure is also laid at the door of the certification schemes of the Forest Stewardship Council and Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification tasked with monitoring that forestry is conducted sustainably according to the criteria.

“We’ve been out in the field over many years and we have found that the big five forest companies are not following the criteria of the certification”, says Malin Sahlin. “Furthermore, the certification bodies have not done their job properly in many of the cases of violations that we have reported.”

The wider issue is also that there is not enough protected forest in Sweden. With only 4% of its productive forest under formal protection, Sweden lags far behind the recommendations of conservationists who argue that at least 20% of the country’s productive forest land should be protected.

Furthermore, it is also clear that Sweden is not meeting the biodiversity objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity, which stipulates that at least 17% of the land surface area should be conserved by 2020. Artur Larsson points out that it is not only a question of protecting what remains, but also restoring already ‘degraded’ forest if biodiversity targets are to be met.

Jobs, profits, and biofuels

The powerful Swedish forest industry and its allies – former Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson has been a chairperson of Sveaskog since 2008 – have branded the assessments of critics as “alarmist” and point to the importance of the industry for Sweden’s economy.

According to the Swedish Forest Agency, exports of forestry and forest industry amounted to SEK 118 billion (over £10 billion) in 2013, contributing to 11% of the country’s total export value. In terms of jobs, it is estimated that around 60,000 people directly depend on the industry whilst employing triple that number indirectly.

The industry is also keen to burnish its image in terms of the growing role of wood fuels as a renewable energy source. In fact, having eclipsed oil, bioenergy now accounts for one-third of Sweden’s domestic energy use, with wood fuel accounting for nearly half of biomass sources.

Critics counter that while commercial forestry is indeed an important generator of jobs and revenue, it is only one consideration among many. Maintaining biodiversity, clean air and water, as well as eco-tourism – a boom industry in Sweden – all depend on healthy forests.

Looking to the future

In just two decades from now, Sweden faces the prospect of having lost much of its remaining old-growth forests with the rest (outside of protected areas) turned more or less into plantation forests lower in biodiversity, their original character and value having been degraded.

Many people agree that, in addition to the adoption of better practices and more effective regulation including formal protection, there needs to be an immediate stop or at least scaling back of the cutting down of natural-like forests to halt the current trend. Yet such a decision would be unpopular as it would cut into the profits and jobs of the big forestry companies.

With Sweden’s forests at a critical juncture, it remains to be seen whether Sweden’s new government, with the Green Party occupying key posts, will muster up the necessary political will to take the necessary steps.

 

 

Petition: ‘Saving old growth forest in Sweden‘.

Alec Forss is a freelance writer living in Sweden. He specializes in writing on the outdoors as well as social and environmental issues (www.alecforss.com).

 

 




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Amazon tribes’ forests are a vital carbon sink Updated for 2026

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Scientists in the US and Latin America have once again confirmed the importance of the Amazon rainforest as a planetary resource and as a carbon sink to store carbon drawn down from the atmosphere. Sadly, they have also confirmed, once again, that it is at risk.

New research, released in time for the UN climate change conference being held in Lima, Peru, shows that 55% of the Amazon’s carbon is in the indigenous territories that are home to the regions’s 385 tribal peoples, or in formally-designated protected natural areas.

The forests are critical to the stability of the global climate, but also to the cultural identity of the forest dwellers of the region and the extraordinarily diverse ecosystems they inhabit.

Indigenous forests are carbon-rich forests

“The territories of the Amazonian indigenous peoples store almost a third of the region’s above-ground carbon on just under a third of the land area”, said Wayne Walker, an ecologist and remote sensing specialist at the Woods Hole Research Centre, US, and lead author of a paper published in the journal Carbon Management.

“This is more forest carbon than is contained in some of the most carbon-rich tropical forests, including Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”

The authors also found that nearly 20% of tropical forests across the Amazon are threatened by legal and illegal logging, new roads, dams and the growth of agriculture, mining and the petroleum industries, at least in part because governments had failed to either recognise or enforce the land rights of indigenous peoples.

The Amazon forest under study is a mosaic of 2,344 indigenous territories and 610 protected areas spread across nine nations. In terms of biological, cultural and linguistic diversity, these areas are exceptional.

They are also the cornerstone of conservation efforts. In this century alone, 253,000 square kilometres of Amazon rainforest – an area bigger than the UK – has been lost for a mix of reasons. And land rights of the indigenous peoples are also under attack, notably in Peru and Brazil, with more than half by area at risk.

‘Protected’ forests are more insecure than ever

A loss to the Amazon peoples would also be a loss to the planet. The Amazon rainforest is a unique resource in biodiversity and is also a carbon sink of global importance.

Every tree is a reservoir of atmospheric carbon. Every felled tree or patch of burned forest is so much carbon dioxide back in the atmosphere, to fuel global warming. The scientists warn that the carbon stored in these supposedly secure landscapes is enough to destabilise the planet’s atmosphere – or contribute to its stability.

“If all the current plans for economic development in the Amazon are actually implemented, the region would become a giant savanna, with islands of forest”, said one of the authors, Beto Ricardo, of Brazil’s SocioEnvironmental Institute (Instituto Socioambiental).

“A vast proportion of indigenous territories and protected areas are increasingly at risk, with potentially disastrous consequences, including 40% of indigenous territories, 30% of protected areas, and 24% of the area that pertains to both.”

 

Tim Radford writes for Climate News Network

 

 




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Amazon tribes’ forests are a vital carbon sink Updated for 2026

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Scientists in the US and Latin America have once again confirmed the importance of the Amazon rainforest as a planetary resource and as a carbon sink to store carbon drawn down from the atmosphere. Sadly, they have also confirmed, once again, that it is at risk.

New research, released in time for the UN climate change conference being held in Lima, Peru, shows that 55% of the Amazon’s carbon is in the indigenous territories that are home to the regions’s 385 tribal peoples, or in formally-designated protected natural areas.

The forests are critical to the stability of the global climate, but also to the cultural identity of the forest dwellers of the region and the extraordinarily diverse ecosystems they inhabit.

Indigenous forests are carbon-rich forests

“The territories of the Amazonian indigenous peoples store almost a third of the region’s above-ground carbon on just under a third of the land area”, said Wayne Walker, an ecologist and remote sensing specialist at the Woods Hole Research Centre, US, and lead author of a paper published in the journal Carbon Management.

“This is more forest carbon than is contained in some of the most carbon-rich tropical forests, including Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”

The authors also found that nearly 20% of tropical forests across the Amazon are threatened by legal and illegal logging, new roads, dams and the growth of agriculture, mining and the petroleum industries, at least in part because governments had failed to either recognise or enforce the land rights of indigenous peoples.

The Amazon forest under study is a mosaic of 2,344 indigenous territories and 610 protected areas spread across nine nations. In terms of biological, cultural and linguistic diversity, these areas are exceptional.

They are also the cornerstone of conservation efforts. In this century alone, 253,000 square kilometres of Amazon rainforest – an area bigger than the UK – has been lost for a mix of reasons. And land rights of the indigenous peoples are also under attack, notably in Peru and Brazil, with more than half by area at risk.

‘Protected’ forests are more insecure than ever

A loss to the Amazon peoples would also be a loss to the planet. The Amazon rainforest is a unique resource in biodiversity and is also a carbon sink of global importance.

Every tree is a reservoir of atmospheric carbon. Every felled tree or patch of burned forest is so much carbon dioxide back in the atmosphere, to fuel global warming. The scientists warn that the carbon stored in these supposedly secure landscapes is enough to destabilise the planet’s atmosphere – or contribute to its stability.

“If all the current plans for economic development in the Amazon are actually implemented, the region would become a giant savanna, with islands of forest”, said one of the authors, Beto Ricardo, of Brazil’s SocioEnvironmental Institute (Instituto Socioambiental).

“A vast proportion of indigenous territories and protected areas are increasingly at risk, with potentially disastrous consequences, including 40% of indigenous territories, 30% of protected areas, and 24% of the area that pertains to both.”

 

Tim Radford writes for Climate News Network

 

 




387790

Amazon tribes’ forests are a vital carbon sink Updated for 2026

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Scientists in the US and Latin America have once again confirmed the importance of the Amazon rainforest as a planetary resource and as a carbon sink to store carbon drawn down from the atmosphere. Sadly, they have also confirmed, once again, that it is at risk.

New research, released in time for the UN climate change conference being held in Lima, Peru, shows that 55% of the Amazon’s carbon is in the indigenous territories that are home to the regions’s 385 tribal peoples, or in formally-designated protected natural areas.

The forests are critical to the stability of the global climate, but also to the cultural identity of the forest dwellers of the region and the extraordinarily diverse ecosystems they inhabit.

Indigenous forests are carbon-rich forests

“The territories of the Amazonian indigenous peoples store almost a third of the region’s above-ground carbon on just under a third of the land area”, said Wayne Walker, an ecologist and remote sensing specialist at the Woods Hole Research Centre, US, and lead author of a paper published in the journal Carbon Management.

“This is more forest carbon than is contained in some of the most carbon-rich tropical forests, including Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”

The authors also found that nearly 20% of tropical forests across the Amazon are threatened by legal and illegal logging, new roads, dams and the growth of agriculture, mining and the petroleum industries, at least in part because governments had failed to either recognise or enforce the land rights of indigenous peoples.

The Amazon forest under study is a mosaic of 2,344 indigenous territories and 610 protected areas spread across nine nations. In terms of biological, cultural and linguistic diversity, these areas are exceptional.

They are also the cornerstone of conservation efforts. In this century alone, 253,000 square kilometres of Amazon rainforest – an area bigger than the UK – has been lost for a mix of reasons. And land rights of the indigenous peoples are also under attack, notably in Peru and Brazil, with more than half by area at risk.

‘Protected’ forests are more insecure than ever

A loss to the Amazon peoples would also be a loss to the planet. The Amazon rainforest is a unique resource in biodiversity and is also a carbon sink of global importance.

Every tree is a reservoir of atmospheric carbon. Every felled tree or patch of burned forest is so much carbon dioxide back in the atmosphere, to fuel global warming. The scientists warn that the carbon stored in these supposedly secure landscapes is enough to destabilise the planet’s atmosphere – or contribute to its stability.

“If all the current plans for economic development in the Amazon are actually implemented, the region would become a giant savanna, with islands of forest”, said one of the authors, Beto Ricardo, of Brazil’s SocioEnvironmental Institute (Instituto Socioambiental).

“A vast proportion of indigenous territories and protected areas are increasingly at risk, with potentially disastrous consequences, including 40% of indigenous territories, 30% of protected areas, and 24% of the area that pertains to both.”

 

Tim Radford writes for Climate News Network

 

 




387790

Amazon tribes’ forests are a vital carbon sink Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




Scientists in the US and Latin America have once again confirmed the importance of the Amazon rainforest as a planetary resource and as a carbon sink to store carbon drawn down from the atmosphere. Sadly, they have also confirmed, once again, that it is at risk.

New research, released in time for the UN climate change conference being held in Lima, Peru, shows that 55% of the Amazon’s carbon is in the indigenous territories that are home to the regions’s 385 tribal peoples, or in formally-designated protected natural areas.

The forests are critical to the stability of the global climate, but also to the cultural identity of the forest dwellers of the region and the extraordinarily diverse ecosystems they inhabit.

Indigenous forests are carbon-rich forests

“The territories of the Amazonian indigenous peoples store almost a third of the region’s above-ground carbon on just under a third of the land area”, said Wayne Walker, an ecologist and remote sensing specialist at the Woods Hole Research Centre, US, and lead author of a paper published in the journal Carbon Management.

“This is more forest carbon than is contained in some of the most carbon-rich tropical forests, including Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”

The authors also found that nearly 20% of tropical forests across the Amazon are threatened by legal and illegal logging, new roads, dams and the growth of agriculture, mining and the petroleum industries, at least in part because governments had failed to either recognise or enforce the land rights of indigenous peoples.

The Amazon forest under study is a mosaic of 2,344 indigenous territories and 610 protected areas spread across nine nations. In terms of biological, cultural and linguistic diversity, these areas are exceptional.

They are also the cornerstone of conservation efforts. In this century alone, 253,000 square kilometres of Amazon rainforest – an area bigger than the UK – has been lost for a mix of reasons. And land rights of the indigenous peoples are also under attack, notably in Peru and Brazil, with more than half by area at risk.

‘Protected’ forests are more insecure than ever

A loss to the Amazon peoples would also be a loss to the planet. The Amazon rainforest is a unique resource in biodiversity and is also a carbon sink of global importance.

Every tree is a reservoir of atmospheric carbon. Every felled tree or patch of burned forest is so much carbon dioxide back in the atmosphere, to fuel global warming. The scientists warn that the carbon stored in these supposedly secure landscapes is enough to destabilise the planet’s atmosphere – or contribute to its stability.

“If all the current plans for economic development in the Amazon are actually implemented, the region would become a giant savanna, with islands of forest”, said one of the authors, Beto Ricardo, of Brazil’s SocioEnvironmental Institute (Instituto Socioambiental).

“A vast proportion of indigenous territories and protected areas are increasingly at risk, with potentially disastrous consequences, including 40% of indigenous territories, 30% of protected areas, and 24% of the area that pertains to both.”

 

Tim Radford writes for Climate News Network

 

 




387790

Amazon tribes’ forests are a vital carbon sink Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




Scientists in the US and Latin America have once again confirmed the importance of the Amazon rainforest as a planetary resource and as a carbon sink to store carbon drawn down from the atmosphere. Sadly, they have also confirmed, once again, that it is at risk.

New research, released in time for the UN climate change conference being held in Lima, Peru, shows that 55% of the Amazon’s carbon is in the indigenous territories that are home to the regions’s 385 tribal peoples, or in formally-designated protected natural areas.

The forests are critical to the stability of the global climate, but also to the cultural identity of the forest dwellers of the region and the extraordinarily diverse ecosystems they inhabit.

Indigenous forests are carbon-rich forests

“The territories of the Amazonian indigenous peoples store almost a third of the region’s above-ground carbon on just under a third of the land area”, said Wayne Walker, an ecologist and remote sensing specialist at the Woods Hole Research Centre, US, and lead author of a paper published in the journal Carbon Management.

“This is more forest carbon than is contained in some of the most carbon-rich tropical forests, including Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”

The authors also found that nearly 20% of tropical forests across the Amazon are threatened by legal and illegal logging, new roads, dams and the growth of agriculture, mining and the petroleum industries, at least in part because governments had failed to either recognise or enforce the land rights of indigenous peoples.

The Amazon forest under study is a mosaic of 2,344 indigenous territories and 610 protected areas spread across nine nations. In terms of biological, cultural and linguistic diversity, these areas are exceptional.

They are also the cornerstone of conservation efforts. In this century alone, 253,000 square kilometres of Amazon rainforest – an area bigger than the UK – has been lost for a mix of reasons. And land rights of the indigenous peoples are also under attack, notably in Peru and Brazil, with more than half by area at risk.

‘Protected’ forests are more insecure than ever

A loss to the Amazon peoples would also be a loss to the planet. The Amazon rainforest is a unique resource in biodiversity and is also a carbon sink of global importance.

Every tree is a reservoir of atmospheric carbon. Every felled tree or patch of burned forest is so much carbon dioxide back in the atmosphere, to fuel global warming. The scientists warn that the carbon stored in these supposedly secure landscapes is enough to destabilise the planet’s atmosphere – or contribute to its stability.

“If all the current plans for economic development in the Amazon are actually implemented, the region would become a giant savanna, with islands of forest”, said one of the authors, Beto Ricardo, of Brazil’s SocioEnvironmental Institute (Instituto Socioambiental).

“A vast proportion of indigenous territories and protected areas are increasingly at risk, with potentially disastrous consequences, including 40% of indigenous territories, 30% of protected areas, and 24% of the area that pertains to both.”

 

Tim Radford writes for Climate News Network

 

 




387790

Amazon tribes’ forests are a vital carbon sink Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




Scientists in the US and Latin America have once again confirmed the importance of the Amazon rainforest as a planetary resource and as a carbon sink to store carbon drawn down from the atmosphere. Sadly, they have also confirmed, once again, that it is at risk.

New research, released in time for the UN climate change conference being held in Lima, Peru, shows that 55% of the Amazon’s carbon is in the indigenous territories that are home to the regions’s 385 tribal peoples, or in formally-designated protected natural areas.

The forests are critical to the stability of the global climate, but also to the cultural identity of the forest dwellers of the region and the extraordinarily diverse ecosystems they inhabit.

Indigenous forests are carbon-rich forests

“The territories of the Amazonian indigenous peoples store almost a third of the region’s above-ground carbon on just under a third of the land area”, said Wayne Walker, an ecologist and remote sensing specialist at the Woods Hole Research Centre, US, and lead author of a paper published in the journal Carbon Management.

“This is more forest carbon than is contained in some of the most carbon-rich tropical forests, including Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”

The authors also found that nearly 20% of tropical forests across the Amazon are threatened by legal and illegal logging, new roads, dams and the growth of agriculture, mining and the petroleum industries, at least in part because governments had failed to either recognise or enforce the land rights of indigenous peoples.

The Amazon forest under study is a mosaic of 2,344 indigenous territories and 610 protected areas spread across nine nations. In terms of biological, cultural and linguistic diversity, these areas are exceptional.

They are also the cornerstone of conservation efforts. In this century alone, 253,000 square kilometres of Amazon rainforest – an area bigger than the UK – has been lost for a mix of reasons. And land rights of the indigenous peoples are also under attack, notably in Peru and Brazil, with more than half by area at risk.

‘Protected’ forests are more insecure than ever

A loss to the Amazon peoples would also be a loss to the planet. The Amazon rainforest is a unique resource in biodiversity and is also a carbon sink of global importance.

Every tree is a reservoir of atmospheric carbon. Every felled tree or patch of burned forest is so much carbon dioxide back in the atmosphere, to fuel global warming. The scientists warn that the carbon stored in these supposedly secure landscapes is enough to destabilise the planet’s atmosphere – or contribute to its stability.

“If all the current plans for economic development in the Amazon are actually implemented, the region would become a giant savanna, with islands of forest”, said one of the authors, Beto Ricardo, of Brazil’s SocioEnvironmental Institute (Instituto Socioambiental).

“A vast proportion of indigenous territories and protected areas are increasingly at risk, with potentially disastrous consequences, including 40% of indigenous territories, 30% of protected areas, and 24% of the area that pertains to both.”

 

Tim Radford writes for Climate News Network

 

 




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