06/03/02 -- Primary Rainforest Landscapes Highly Sensitive to Fragmentation

***********************************************

FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY

Primary Rainforest Landscapes Highly Sensitive to Fragmentation

***********************************************

Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org, Inc.

http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation Portal

http://forests.org/web/ -- Discuss Forest Conservation

June 3, 2002

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org

Primary rainforest wildernesses can only be ecologically sustained at the

scale of human landscapes. It is meaningless to speak of sustainably

managing stands of trees - ecosystem processes and patterns are maintained

through hierarchical constraint at much larger scales. An exhaustive

study, the culmination of over two decades of research by the

Smithsonian's Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project (some of the

best applied ecological researchers in the World), clearly indicates that

even slight human disturbance of primary rainforests significantly

disrupts species, their movements and their community assemblages.

Policy-makers - including major environmental organizations - appear to

willfully be disregarding the best available science regarding

requirements for global forest sustainability and necessary policy to

ensure primary rainforest wildernesses do not cease to exist. Commercial

scale logging of primary forests - certified or not - ravages species

composition as well as forest function and structure. Loss and commercial

diminishment of the World's remaining rainforests threatens global

ecological sustainability and our very existence. The integrity of the

global ecosystem as a whole - Gaia if you will - depends upon maintaining

and restoring global forest, ocean, water, atmospheric and other

ecological sub-systems and their interdependent cycles.

Remaining forest wildlands make the Earth habitable, house most of the

World's species, and are the culmination of billions of years of

evolution. Requirements for global ecological sustainability and

equitable human survival and advancement demand that most of the World's

remaining primary forests are preserved as large, global ecological

reserves. Surely, this will prove difficult to achieve, but it is not

impossible. For a relative pittance, governments and forests peoples

could be provided economic incentives to protect and benignly manage these

critical forest ecosystems. Political will is required to halt the trade

in illegally logged forest products. Consumption patterns of forest

products must change. Culturally appropriate protection paradigms must be

developed based upon local needs and knowledge. The human family must

make a commitment to maintaining large, natural rainforests right now, or

the World will soon be catastrophically biologically diminished and so

very, very dangerously different.

g.b.

For more information on "landscape sustainability" see the Forest

Conservation Portal's full-text search of over 1000 web sites at:

http://forests.org/cgi-

bin/texis.exe/webinator/forestmain?query=landscape+sustainability

*******************************

RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

Title: Rainforest Wildlife Surprisingly Sensitive To Landscape Changes;

Long-Term Study Reveals Dramatic Impact Of Fragmentation

http://www.sciencedaily.com/, with information from Smithsonian

Institution (http://www.si.edu/)

Date: June 3, 2002

The slightest clearing in the vast rainforests of the Amazon can wreak

havoc with the inhabitants, impeding the movement of species and

disrupting their communities, according to the results of a 22-year

investigation published in the June issue of Conservation Biology.

A team of researchers led by William F. Laurance of the Smithsonian

Tropical Research Institute reviewed more than 340 articles and papers

generated by the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project (BDFFP),

the world's largest and longest-running study of habitat fragmentation,

since its inception in 1979.

They found that the effect of habitat fragmentation on the structure,

composition and function of rainforests is far-reaching and widely felt.

It increases local extinction rates for many plant and animal species;

drastically alters species richness and abundance; and disrupts ecological

processes, as well as creating opportunities for non-native species

invasions, altering forest carbon storage and increasing vulnerability to

fire.

"A surprising number of wildlife species are extremely sensitive to very

small clearings," said Laurance. "Even a 30-meter-wide road alters the

community composition of understory birds and other wildlife, and creates

a complete barrier to the movements of some species."

Laurance believes the results of the analysis indicate clearly that

Amazonian nature reserves will have to be very large in order to maintain

their diversity and dynamics, and to withstand external threats from such

human disturbances as burning, logging and hunting.

The Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragment Project, a joint effort of the

National Institute for Amazonian Research (INPA) in Brazil and the

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, seeks to answer questions about

plant and animal relations, the biology of extinction, the process of

forest regeneration, and the effects of forest edge and fragmentation on

the genetic structure of tropical species.

The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, headquartered in Panama City,

Republic of Panama, is one of the world's leading centers for research on

the ecology, evolution and conservation of tropical organisms. More

information is available at http://www.stri.org.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by

Smithsonian Institution for journalists and other members of the public.

If you wish to quote from any part of this story, please credit

Smithsonian Institution as the original source. You may also wish to

include the following link in any citation:

###RELAYED TEXT ENDS###

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is

distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior

interest in receiving forest conservation informational materials

for educational, personal and non-commercial use only. Recipients

should seek permission from the source to reprint this PHOTOCOPY.

All efforts are made to provide accurate, timely pieces, though

ultimate responsibility for verifying all information rests with

the reader. For additional forest conservation news & information

please see the Forest Conservation Portal at URL=

http://forests.org/

Networked by Forests.org, Inc., gbarry@forests.org