Urgency
Consequences of Deforestation
Rainforests around the world still continue to fall. Does it really make a difference? Why should anyone care if some plants, animals, mushrooms, and microorganisms perish? Rainforests are often hot and humid, difficult to reach, insect-ridden, and have elusive wildlife.
Actually
the concern should not be about losing a few plants and animals;
mankind stands to lose much more. By destroying the tropical forests,
we risk our own quality of life, gamble with the stability of climate
and local weather, threaten the existence of other species, and
undermine the valuable services provided by biological diversity.
Climate change is costing us now
Despite the strong conclusions of the international and Australian
scientific communities there are people yet to be convinced that
human-induced climate change is likely to or already having adverse
impacts.
Climate scientists tend to focus on what might happen decades into the
future based on scenarios of varying future greenhouse gas emissions.
However, the starting point can be today, as measured by environmental
trends of rising temperatures, longer droughts, depleted water
resources, more heatwaves, shifting storm tracks, rising sea levels and
more extreme events.
Extinction outpaces evolution
Extinctions are
currently outpacing the capacity for new species to evolve, according
to Simon Stuart, chair of the Species Survival Commission for the
International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
"Measuring the rate at which new species evolve is difficult, but
there's no question that the current extinction rates are faster,"
Stuart told the Guardian. .
He added that E.O, Wilsons' estimate that the extinction rate could
rise to 10,000 times the background rate would likely prove prescient.
National parks in India and Nepal hit by rhino poachers
The rare Indian rhinoceros is not safe from poachers even in national parks.
In Nepal's world renowned Royal Chitwan National Park, twenty-four Indian rhinos (Rhinoceros unicornis)
have been poached since the last census was taken in 2008. The most
recent one was killed last Thursday. Approximately 372 Indian rhinos
survive in the park, and the population is in decline.
Oil palm plantations support fewer ant species than rainforest
Oil palm plantations
support substantially less biodiversity than natural forests when it
comes to ant species, reports new research published in Basic and Applied Ecology.
Tom Fayle, a Cambridge University biologist, and colleagues sampled ant
populations in a rainforest in Danum Valley Conservation Area and
nearby oil palm plantations in Sabah, a state in Malaysian Borneo. The
researchers counted 16,000 worker ants from 309 species in the natural
forest but only in 110 species at the oil palm plantation.
