Tropical forests are being felled, burned, fragmented, and overhunted at unprecedented rates leading some scientists to believe that hundreds of thousands of species could vanish forever this century. 

Professor William Laurance, a Distinguished Research Professor at James Cook University in Cairns, Queensland, believes the situation is dire.

“It’s not just that tropical forests are being destroyed at a rate of 50 football fields a minute,” Professor Laurance said, “but they’re also being badly degraded by overhunting, wildfires, logging, and road building.

“In addition, exotic diseases are killing off many species, such as hundreds of amphibians, and global warming could be a far bigger threat to tropical wildlife than most people suspect, especially if it worsens droughts or causes cool-adapted species on tropical mountains to disappear.” 

Professor Laurance, a key leader in a growing international debate over the future of tropical biodiversity, has edited a series of eight articles just published in the leading journal Conservation Biology, all focused on the tropical extinction debate.

The authors of the eight articles include many world-leading tropical scientists. 

However, the co-editor of the articles, Dr Joseph Wright of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, takes an opposing view.  Dr Wright asserts that many tropical species will survive even in degraded or regenerating forests. 

“The stakes are high,” said Professor Laurance.  “I hope the other camp is right, but I don’t believe the evidence supports them.  Unless we act now to slow tropical deforestation and limit harmful climate change, we could lose a shocking number of species.

“Even the other guys think the situation is bad,” he said.  “They say we’ll see a steady stream of extinctions in the coming decades. 

“But we believe we could see an avalanche of extinctions—unless we get really serious about slowing tropical forest destruction.”

Source: James Cook University News