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WORLDWIDE
FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
World's
Fragmented Forests Losing Ground
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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org
http://forests.org/ -- Forest
Conservation Archives
http://forests.org/web/ -- Discuss Forest
Conservation
05/31/00
OVERVIEW
& COMMENTARY
Increasingly
fragmented tropical rainforests are in danger of biological collapse if upscale
requirements for sustainability across large spatial scales are not more
adequately addressed. Forest landscape
and bioregional sustainability, in terms of ecological pattern and process, is
dependent upon the presence of large ecologically intact core areas and
landscape connectivity. Achieving
upscale rainforest sustainability depends upon maintaining natural forests as
the context for benign forest management activities of various types and
scales. This requires a mix of large,
strictly preserved areas, within which ecologically based conservation
management activities are interspersed.
It is heartening to see increased emphasis upon maintaining and
connecting large rainforest blocks.
This is the scale where sustainability of biodiversity and ecosystems
are most meaningfully determined in the long term.
g.b.
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Title: World's Fragmented Forests Losing Ground
Source: c Environment News Service (ENS) 2000. All
Rights
Reserved. http://www.ens.lycos.com/
Status: Copyright 2000, contact source for
permission to reprint
Date: May 30, 2000
WASHINGTON,
DC, May 30, 2000 (ENS) - Many tropical forest fragments are in immediate danger
of collapse if new conservation measures are not enacted quickly, according to
a new study.
The
study, published in this week's journal "Science," published by the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, shows that the effects of
logging and road construction are dividing much of what remains of tropical
forests into small, isolated fragments that are unable to sustain their
original biodiversity.
Authors
Claude Gascon, G. Bruce Williamson and Gustavo A.B. da Fonseca write that as
forests are carved into smaller parcels because of human activity, a series of
ecological changes occurs on the fragment edges which affects forest
composition and the survival of biodiversity.
"In
many places, these are the last remnants of primary tropical forest," said
Fonseca, who is vice president of the Washington, DC based environmental group Conservation
International (CI) and executive director of the Center for Applied
Biodiversity Science.
Conservation
International applies innovations in science, economics, policy and community
participation to protect plant and animal diversity in the most vulnerable
tropical wilderness areas and key marine ecosystems.
"With
so much biodiversity at stake in these unconnected islands of forests, long
term conservation can only be achieved if these fragments are connected across
broad landscapes," said Fonseca.
"What
remains of much of the world's tropical forests are mere fragments, and we now
understand they face new risks," said Gascon, another CI vice president
and lead author of the article. "As tropical forests are continually
reduced to small fragments they are more susceptible than we imagined to the
effects of human disturbance."
In the
Atlantic Forest hotspot of Brazil, for example, the average size of restricted
use protected areas is 9,210 hectares (22,758 acres). These fragments exist
among large expanses of sugar cane and Eucalyptus plantations where burning and
herbicide application regularly occur.
The
forest fragment edges are affected by these activities which kill a diverse
range plants in the remaining primary forest interior, leaving the edge
dominated by scrubby secondary vegetation.
Zones
where forest edges are affected easily reach up to one kilometre (.62 mile)
wide, and can impact forest species and biological processes from 100 to 300
meters from the forest edge. This means that forest fragments of up to 1,000
hectares (2,470 acres) can easily be composed entirely of edge affected
habitat.
The
increase of human activity in the tropics has led to the introduction of exotic
species, and an increase in fires, which compounds the effects of deforestation
in places like the Atlantic Forest, the Philippines and Madagascar, where the
landscape is already highly fragmented.
In
Brazil, at least one timber company is working to preserve as well as harvest
the forests. In Itacoatiara, Brazil today, during a meeting onboard
Greenpeace's vessel, the Amazon Guardian, the timber company Precious Woods
Amazon presented a declaration which was the outcome of negotiations and onsite
forest inspections with Greenpeace that lasted more than a year.
With
its declaration, Precious Woods promised to make frequent comparisons between a
the logged tracts and a set aside forest reserve which will serve as a standard
for sustainable forest management.
The
timber company will set clear logging limits to guarantee that 85 percent of
standing tree volume always remain in the forest.
There
will be no application of pesticides, other chemicals or alien organisms, in
order to maintain the natural state of the forest; and the company has agreed
to minimize silviculture so that the composition of native trees species will
not be altered.
Precious
Woods is the only logging operation in the Amazon rainforest certified as
sustainable by the Forest Stewardship Council.
"This
forest management scheme should serve as a model for logging in ancient
forests," said Roberto Kishinami, Greenpeace Brazil's executive director.
"An approach such as this is the best safeguard against destructive
logging, and against illegal logging, which the Brazilian government themselves
admits is 80 percent of all logging in the Amazon."
"Ecological
logging, combined with other activities such as rubber tapping, ecotourism,
demarcation of indigenous lands, and the extension of protected areas, will
guarantee a secure and diverse economic and ecological future for the
Amazon," Kishinami said.
The
Forest Stewardship Council is an international, non-profit, non-governmental
organisation that promotes independent, third party certification of well managed
forests and the labelling of products from these forests for use by forest
product consumers.
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