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Chapter 10:Forests and Deforestation
Chapter 10: FORESTS AND DEFORESTATION
Ponderosa Pine forest ten years after harvest, Shoshone National Forest
USDA Forest Service - Rocky Mountain Region Archives
| DEFORESTATION TEMPERATE
FORESTS TROPICAL FOREST |
"The law
doth punish man or woman
That steals the goose from off the Common
But lets the greater felon loose
That steals the Common from the goose"
-- Anonymous
response in 1764 to Sir Charles Pratt's fencing of common land (Thanks to US Fish and
Wildlife Service for finding this!)
DEFORESTATION
Wherever people have lived in forested areas,
they have always cut down trees, either to use the timber or to make space for
agriculture. Wood has been the dominant heating fuel, and construction material for
housing and ships, for almost all of recorded history, and in this century vast quantities
are also being used for paper production. Paper products now use 25% of the world's timber
harvest. Paper production worldwide has increased 20-fold since 1913.
There are alternatives to tree-cutting for paper making.
In the last 5,000 years, humans have reduced forests from
roughly 50% of the earth's land surface to less than 20%. If deforestation continues at
present rates, Thailand will have no forest left in 25 years; the Philippines in less than
20 years, and Nepal in 15 years. And in most places the rate of deforestation is
increasing.
Many of the large areas of grassland in the world, such as
the savannas of Africa, the steppes of eastern Europe and Russia, the pampas of Argentina,
and at least some of the prairies of North America, were forested before human
disturbance. In the drier areas of the world such as North Africa, Greece, Italy, and
Australia, the deforested areas have subsequently been overgrazed, and have lost soil so
rapidly that they have turned to desert (desertification). The UN in 2000 reported
that half of all land in South Asia has lost agricultural potential because of
desertification.
As a result of deforestation and poor forest management,
about ten percent of the world's 80-100,000 tree species are in danger of extinction,
according to a 1998 report by World Wildlife Fund.
Replanting is done on only a fraction of the deforested area,
and it usually creates a monoculture plantation, with much less biological diversity (both
plant and animal) and less disease resistance than in virgin, or old-growth forest.
Rainforest, Forest and Biodiversity Conservation News & Information
TEMPERATE FORESTS
Biological
Value
Temperate old-growth (i.e. not harvested) forests such as
those in the U.S. Pacific Northwest provide a unique habitat for many plants and animals.
Old-growth forest in Northern California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia provides
the only suitable habitat for the Northern spotted owl. These forests also provide
essential habitat for the Marbled Murrelet, the Red-cockaded Woodpecker, the Northern
Goshawk, the tailed frog, the Olympic Salamander, and the Red tree Vole. In Alaska, old
growth forest provides critical winter habitat for the Sitka black-tailed deer and
breeding habitat for the Canada goose.
Old-growth forest is threatened mainly by direct exploitation
in the form of excessive logging. In Northern California, Oregon and Washington
over 90% of the ancient trees are gone. 95% of the original area of redwood forest in
California has been lost.
27 Fortune-500 companies including Kinko's, Hallmark, and
Hewlett-Packard announced in 1998 that they will no longer sell products or use packaging
made from old-growth trees.
Other links: Indicators of the Condition and Use of
Forests | Taiga Rescue Network | Heartwood | The Dilemma of Indian Forestry | Native
Americans and the Environment - forestry | Forestry Links - Native Americans and the
Environment | Sierra Club - Responsible Trade Campaign
The U.S. Forest Service
Much of the forested land in the U.S. is managed by the U.S. Forest Service, under the Department of Agriculture. The Forest Service is the largest natural resource agency in the federal government, with an annual budget of about $2 billion. It manages 300,000 square miles in 155 National Forests and 22 national grasslands in 44 states. The lands provide habitat for more than 10,000 plant species and about 3000 species of fish and wildlife including 17 percent of federally listed endangered and threatened species, especially those that require large undisturbed areas (e.g. grizzly bear, gray wolf, lynx) or that require old-growth forest (Red-cockaded woodpecker).
The main statute governing the management of National Forests is the National Forest Management Act of 1976 (as amended). It requires the Secretary of Agriculture to implement a resource management plan for each unit of the National Forest System. The management plans must be based on multiple-use, sustained-yield principles. They must:
- ensure consideration of both economic and environmental factors;
- provide for wildlife and fish;
- provide for the diversity of plant and animal communities;
- ensure timber harvesting will occur only where water quality and fish habitat are adequately protected from serious detriment;
- ensure clearcutting and other harvesting will occur only where it may be done in a manner consistent with the protection of soil, watersheds, fish, wildlife, recreation, aesthetic resources and regeneration of the timber resource.
In spite of its multiple-use authority, the Forest Service gives much higher priority to timber harvesting than to other uses. 136,000 square miles out of the 300,000 square miles (conversions) in the National Forest System are classified as commercial forest - producing, or capable of producing, timber. The Forest plans project huge increases in timber harvest including the cutting of old-growth timber, below-cost sales, and extensive clear-cutting. They pay relatively little attention to wilderness and biodiversity. Consequently, their legality is being challenged by environmentalists in the courts. The Sierra Club recently launched a campaign to completely protect all of our national forests and other federal public lands from commercial logging.
Much of the timber that is harvested from National Forests is sold at a great financial loss. Lodgepole pines in Idaho's Targhee National Forest are sold to timber companies for about $1 each, even though it costs the Forest Service (in road construction, surveying, and paperwork) twice that amount to make the sale possible. The Forest Service sells 600-year old Sitka spruce trees from Alaska's Tongass National Forest for $2 or less; the trees are chopped into pulp for paper production. The Forest Service subsidizes timber companies to the extent of about $500 million per year in taxpayers' money. According to the governments General Accounting Office Forest Service lost over $2.1 billion from 1992 through 1997 on its logging program.
The effect of this subsidy is to make wood and paper cheaper
than it should be, and to encourage excess use. It makes virgin paper much cheaper than
recycled paper - making it difficult for the recycled paper industry to succeed.
The Forest Service justifies below-cost sales in terms of
their "non-timber benefits" - the roads also serve as fire roads, and they claim
that some timber sales improve wildlife habitat or remove diseased trees. But the real
reason is that the unprofitable harvests are being carried out to provide work for
foresters and sawmill operators.
Clear-cutting is taking place in many National Forests
including Tongass National Forest in Alaska, and Olympic National Forest in Washington.
Environmentalists have also been trying to change a USFS rule
in order to allow them to compete with loggers in bidding for leases on timber in national
forests. The current rule allows bidding only by "responsible purchasers" who
are able and intend to log the trees. In May 1997 the Administration refused to legalize
"nonharvesting bids", mainly because it would waste money spent on reviewing the
environmental impacts of proposed logging. A spokesman also said that non-harvesting
bidders might enjoy an unfair advantage over harvesting bidders because they have lower
operating and personnel costs!
Roadless Areas in National Forests
In October 1999, President Clinton announced a plan to
protect 40 million acres of USFS forest, as roadless areas. Get a map of the plan
for your own state. Here is the Southern California part of the plan:
Only 18% of Forest Service lands -- the wilderness areas designated by Congress -- are currently protected from new road building. An additional 31%, or 60 million acres, are still free of roads but not permanently protected. But in December 2000 President Clinton published the Roadless Area Conservation Rule to protect those 60 million acres from road building and most logging. The rule has been challenged in lawsuits by states, tribes, and various interested parties but so far has been upheld in the courts.
Bush Administration attempts to weaken environmental protection in National Forests
In 2002 the Bush administration proposed a sweeping revision of the National Forest Management Act. New rules would allow supervisors of each of the country's 155 national forests to approve logging, drilling and mining and to ignore the forest plan's guidelines for protecting wildlife. The proposal also eliminates the need to scientifically monitor the effect of these activities on plants and wildlife and restricts public participation in the planning process. Environmentalists see this proposal as one of many indications that the Bush administration is willing to allow timber, oil and mining interests to harvest natural resources with little or no concern for the environment. They point out that the proposed National Forest Management Act regulations are almost identical to a set of recommendations made by the American Forest and Paper Association.
The Northern Spotted Owl
The Forest Service manages most of the remaining occupied
habitat of the Northern spotted owl in the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest.
They estimate that about 1,700 pairs remain. Spotted owls require old-growth forest
because the mixture of new, old and dead trees gives them protection from predators as
well as plenty of prey.
A lawsuit forced the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in
June1990 to list the owl as threatened, but the timber companies have been trying
hard to prevent the owl issue from reducing their harvest rates.
In 1994 the Clinton Administration came up with a plan to try
to preserve spotted owl habitat and at the same time allow logging on millions of acres of
federal land in Washington, Oregon and Northern California. The plan allows logging up to
1.1 billion board feet per year, about one fourth the annual average cut in the 1980's,
and it allows harvesting of 20% of the remaining old-growth timber. It bans logging on 10
million acres of forest in a collection of nature reserves. While increasing protection
for the owl on federal lands, the plan eases restrictions on the incidental take of
spotted owls on non-Federal lands.
The United States government and 13 conservation groups
reached an agreement in November 1999 to settle a lawsuit over implementation of the
Pacific Northwest Forest Plan. The agreement obligates the USFS and BLM to complete
wildlife surveys prior to conducting timber sales and other activities that could harm
wildlife.
The plan is similar to other Habitat Conservation Plans being
developed in other areas. It increases protection in a series of nature reserves,
providing some protection for other natural resources as well as the spotted owl. For
example, by providing buffer zones along rivers and streams it tries to prevent the silt
build-up in streams caused by deforestation which is one of the main reasons for salmon
decline.
Five years into Clinton forest plan, some fear goals slipping
away
Marbled Murrelet
The case of the Marbled Murrelet
Charlotte goshawk
U.S. order may bolster Alaska goshawk's protection
"Salvage Logging"
Massive destruction of U.S. National Forests took place
during 1996-7, thanks to an obscure rider to the 1995 budget rescissions bill initiated by
North Carolina Rep. Charles Taylor. This provision opened up millions of acres of trees
for "salvage logging" - the selective removal of trees that had been damaged by
fire, pests, or the weather. It was signed by the President on July 27, 1995.
Vice-president Al Gore has called it the Clinton administration's biggest mistake. The
Salvage Timber Rider expired in late 1997, but by then thousands of "salvage"
sales had been accomplished and the resulting cutting may go on for decades.
Timber Sale Exclusions
A recent lawsuit has revealed another USFS strategy for promoting timber sales at the
expense of environmental considerations. Timber harvests that removed 250,000 board
feet or less of merchantable wood products, or salvage activities that removed 1,000,000
board feet or less of merchantable wood products, were exempted from the review
requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). So the USFS simply
subdivided the sales in order to make the individual sales exempt.
The
Headwaters Forest
The Headwaters Forest, near Eureka in Northern California, is the focus of recent
controversy over timber harvesting. Take a tour. Many groves of the 2000-year old Coastal
Redwoods are in public ownership, but the Headwaters Forest is the last significant stand
still in private ownership and therefore unprotected. It contains six groves of the oldest
and tallest trees in the world. The forest provides habitat for the California black bear,
mountain lion, Pacific fisher, marbled murrelet, northern spotted owl, torrent salamander,
tailed frog, steelhead trout, and coho salmon. Their survival is dependent on a diverse
and healthy old-growth forest.
The Pacific Lumber Company owned the Headwaters Forest for
over a century, then in 1986 it was purchased in a hostile takeover by Charles Hurwitz,
owner of Texas based Maxxam Inc. He immediately announced that, in order to pay off the
bonds that were issued to finance the takeover, all of the old redwoods would be logged by
2007.
It soon became obvious that the only way to save the
Headwaters Forest was to buy it from Pacific Lumber. After a long and contentious series
of proposals, protests, ballot measures, and negotiations, an agreement in principle was
announced on February 27, 1998 for a 50-year Habitat Conservation Plan. The proposal was
endorsed by the federal and state governments, Pacific Lumber Company and its parent
company. Under the agreement:
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Pacific Lumber to receive, in addition to the 7,700 acres of timberland,
approximately $300 million of compensation (a significant discount below full market value
of property). "
As one of its last decisions in the 1998 session, on Sept. 1
the California State Assembly agreed to spend $245 million for the state's share to buy
7,500 acres of the Headwaters Forest. The federal government would pay an additional $250
million. The agreement was signed just two minutes before the government offers were
due to expire on March 1, 1999. As part of the agreement, Pacific Lumber agrees to
strict monitoring of and restrictions on lumbering in its other forest holdings.
Headwaters a Case Study in Forest Policy Failure | Final
Environmental Impact Report, January 22, 1999 | One Battle - Headwaters Forest |
Headwaters Information Page | The Alaska rainforest
Logging outside the U.S.
Since the timber companies have been running into
difficulties in the U.S., they have been turning to other countries where the laws are
more in their favor. Both Weyerhauser and the Korean Hyundai Corporation are logging
extensively in the northeast corner of Russia, where the economy is extremely depressed
and the people are in great need of jobs and income. This is destroying some of the only
remaining habitat of the Siberian Tiger, a species whose population is only about 300 and
that faces serious threats from poaching.
The Siberian tiger is also jeopardized by forest fires that
burned out of control for over three months in 1998. The Siberian northern boreal forests,
called Taiga, where the fires were burning are mainly spruce and fir trees. These forests
are twice the size of the Amazon rain forest and contain about a quarter of the world's
timber reserves. The fires reached the Sihote-Alin wildlife reserve, one of the last
remaining refuges for the Siberian Tiger. Partly a result of a very dry year, the
fires devastated over 50,000 square miles of forest, including about two-thirds of
the island of Sakhalin.
The attention on the forest fires is obscuring another
serious problem - the smuggling of valuable cedar, elm, and ash to China, Korea, and
Japan. Illegal logging has soared over the past decade, especially since borders opened
after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Illegal logging is practically equal to
forest fires in terms of its threat to the taiga, says Vladimir Shetinin, deputy chairman
of the Primorsky regions State Committee on Environmental Protection, based in
Vladivostok.
U.S. timber giant Boise Cascade has shut down mills in the
Pacific Northwest and now has plans to construct a huge wood mill in Chile's temperate
rain forest. More than a third of the world's remaining temperate rainforests are in
Southern Chile, and the "siempreverde" coastal temperate rainforest that is
threatened by the Boise Cascade mill has the highest levels of biodiversity of all of
Chile's forests.
British Columbia's timber industry has lost money three years
in a row, leading to closure of 10 sawmills, one plywood mill and one pulp mill in 1998.
In response, the industry is calling for less government regulation of the industry.
Recent controversy has focused on the spectacular Clayoquot Sound, which has already
suffered from extensive clearcutting.
Weyerhaeuser commitment to Great Bear questioned | West Fraser -- Raw Log Exports
What you can do
The Heartwood organization has prepared a guide to help people to get involved in protecting their public forests.
Additional reading
Forest News | Taiga News | GREEN TEA TIME: Nature
conservation in Japan and trees of the world
TROPICAL FOREST
| The habitat with the greatest abundance and diversity of species on
earth is the tropical moist forest. This includes
areas with over 400 cm of rainfall per year (rain forests) and additional areas receiving
between 200 and 400 cm of rainfall (moist deciduous forests). The remaining tropical moist forests (about half the original
area) now occupy about 3.6 million square miles or 7% of the earth's land surface,
yet they are home to about half of all species on earth. This type of habitat is
probably less studied than almost any other. Only about 15% of species in this habitat
have been named. In one four-mile square of tropical forest in Brazil, you
could find 750 species of trees, 15,000 of flowering plants, 125 of mammals, 400 of birds,
100 of reptiles, and 60 of amphibians. |
Recommended
book: |
Countries with especially high levels of biodiversity are
called "megadiversity countries". They are mostly the countries with large areas
of tropical forest. Many of these countries are rapidly losing their tropical forests.
Brazil, Central America, parts of Africa, and the Philippines are losing forest at the
highest rates.
Tropical Deforestation
Tropical deforestation is leading to the loss of thousands of
species, many of which were undiscovered. Well documented historical examples include the
nearly complete clearing of Mauritius and Rodriguez islands resulting in the extinction of
at least 12 bird species. The complete clearing of Cebu island in the Philippines resulted
in the extinction of all 10 of its endemic birds. The clearing of St. Helena led to the
extinction of 80 of the islands' more than 100 endemic plant species, most of its land
snails and 3 of its 4 native land bird species.
Deforestation may have been responsible for the mysterious
collapse of Mayan civilization in Guatemala about 500 years before the arrival of
Christopher Columbus in the West Indies. The Peten region had one of the densest
human populations of any time in human history, with almost 2,600 people per square mile
in the cities. Then over a period of about 100 years these people vanished. It is
being suggested that this was an example of what happens when a human population exceeds
the carrying capacity of its environment. The government of Guatemala is now
seriously concerned that history is about to repeat itself.
| The incredible rate of destruction of tropical forests was first
brought to the attention of the public by a book called "The Sinking Ark" by
Norman Myers published in 1979. At that time Myers estimated that of the original extent
of about 6.2 million square miles of tropical moist forests only about 3.6 million square
miles was left: about 44% of the original tropical moist forest on the earth had already
been lost. Enormous amounts of tropical forest have been lost in Central America,
Brazil, Africa, and Southeast Asia. |
Recommended book: Trees of Life :
Saving Tropical Forests and Their Biological Wealth (A World Resources Institute Guide to
the Environment) by Kenton Miller, Laura Tangley, Gus Speth. Paperback - 218 pages (April
1991) |
Deforesting for the hamburger habit
Major Tropical Forest Regions
Brazil
In the Brazilian Amazon, deforestation has been occurring
during 1995-1998 at the rate of 4.8 million acres a year (the equivalent of seven football
fields a minute). Companies from Malaysia, Indonesia, China, South Korea, and
Singapore are stripping the Amazon of its most valuable timber, such as mahogany, but they
also destroy many other kinds of trees. Their main customers are the U.S., Europe
and Japan.
One of the contributing factors to deforestation in South
America is the construction of roads. The Transamazonian Highway in the
1970's, and another big road from Manaus 600 miles north to the Venezuelan border, have
opened up large areas of forest for slash-and-burn agriculture. More highways like this
are planned.
One of the highest rates of deforestation is in the state of
Rondônia, in western Brazil. The federal government has given away large tracts of land
in order to encourage settlement in this state, leading to a land rush in the 1970s and
1980s. Loggers, cattle farmers, and peasants clear the land by burning when
vegetation is driest at the end of the growing season. It is estimated that
Rondônia has lost 20% of its forest through burning. In October 1991 a team of scientists
estimated that, at peak times, 88,000 fires were burning in Brazil, releasing as much soot
as a volcanic eruption.
One of the areas that is almost totally gone is Brazil's
400,000 sq. m. Atlantic Forest - 95% of it has been lost already. This is an area with
hundreds of species found nowhere else, including 21 species and subspecies of New World
Monkeys, of which 13 are endangered.
Brazils problems = Earths problems
The Brazilian government announced on 2/11/99 that it was
suspending all new permits for clearing land in the Amazon River basin. This
announcement came the day after reports that the rate at which the Amazon rain forest is
being destroyed jumped 27% in 1998.
Amazon forest loss estimates double
Madagascar
Madagascar is the world's 4th largest island, just a bit
larger than California and situated just off the east coast of Africa. It has been
separated from Africa for about 65 million years, and during that time has evolved a very
distinctive flora and fauna. Biologically it is one of the richest areas on earth,
with about 10,000 endemic species of flowering plants, including 8 entire families found
nowhere else. It is one of ten recognized "hotspots" of biological diversity on
the earth. 97% of its butterflies and moths, 90% of its primates, reptiles and frogs, and
75% of its flowering plants live nowhere else. Slides show baobab trees, chameleons, lemur
and comet-tailed moths. The rain forests of eastern Madagascar have a very high species
richness per unit area. Since the arrival of man only 1500-2000 years ago (it is the most
recently occupied major land mass) there have been many large mammals and birds driven to
extinction.
The tropical rain forests of Madagascar before human
colonization are thought to have covered most of the eastern coastal plains that run along
the length of the island. Now most of the forest has been cleared by people, cattle
and fire, leaving forest covering less than 15% of the land, mostly on steep slopes and
rugged terrain. Only about 2% of the total area is in parks or reserves. The
rate of destruction slowed from 2.5% per year between 1950 and 1973 to 0.8% per year
between 1973 and 1985. This appeared to be a result of reduction in the amount of forest
that is accessible because of the elimination of most of the forests on all but the
steepest slopes. The satellite images also showed extensive deforestation even in areas
that had been established as Nature Reserves.
Madagascar also has a tropical dry forest, that is even more
endangered than the rain forest.
Africa
Deforestation in the drier parts of Africa has led to an even
worse problem - desertification. This is happening very quickly in the Sahel - a semi-arid
belt of poor soil several hundred miles wide along the southern edge of the Saharan
desert. A combination of overgrazing and deforestation has allowed the desert to overrun,
in 50 years, an area the size of France and Austria combined. This type of desert is
completely barren, consisting of wind-driven sand dunes.
The town of Timbuktu, Mali, is on the edge of the
desertification area; it was once the "Golden City" of interior Africa. In 1976
the waterways and floodplain were clearly visible in aerial photographs. Nine years later,
similar photographs show the floodplain and waterways dried out, and Timbuktu surrounded
by sand dunes.
Australia
Australia
is clearing its native forests for
grazing, wheat production and urban development faster than any other developed
country in the world, losing about 2,000 square miles a year. Partly because of
this, many of Australia's unique marsupial mammals are threatened with extinction. Most at
risk are the northern hairy-nosed wombat and the rat kangaroo.
Papua New Guinea
Dec 1998 update
Causes of Deforestation
Norman Myers analyzed the factors that were leading to the
depletion of tropical moist forests:
Clearing
for agriculture. In many areas of the tropics the soil is very thin and cannot sustain
crop production for more than a few years. Therefore peasant farmers have operated with a
shifting (slash and burn) method. The farmers cut down the trees and burn a patch of
forest, raise crops for 2 or 3 years until the soil loses fertility, and then move on and
repeat the process in another part of the forest. In temperate forests 97% of the
nutrients required for new plant growth are stored in the soil, so it is very fertile. In
contrast, in tropical forests up to 90% of nutrients are present in the vegetation itself
and are lost during the slash and burn. This style of agriculture was sustainable as long
as the human population density was less than about 10 or 12 persons per square mile.
Under those conditions a patch of farmed forest land could be left fallow for at least 10
years, and in that much time it could renew itself. Now there are often three times as
many people per square mile, and they use the land so intensively that it does not have
any chance to recover. Myers' estimate of the rate of loss of tropical forests from slash
and burn cultivation was 20,000 square miles per year destroyed and 25,000 square miles
severely disturbed.
Fuel
wood. Myers' estimated that gathering fuel wood destroys around 5,000 square miles and
severely disturbs another 5,000 square miles of tropical forest each year. Haiti has
only about 1.5% of its original forest cover, due to logging, burning and conversion to
farmland. Now the main threat to the remaining fragments is cutting trees to produce
charcoal, which is the major fuel used for cooking.
Cattle
raising. Forest destruction for cattle-raising is a major problem especially in Central
America, especially Costa Rica, where many foreign companies have bought large tracts of
forest in order to raise cattle for beef for export, largely to the United States. The
financial cost of raising beef in Costa Rica is only about half the cost in the U.S.; so,
we get very cheap hamburgers if we only count the financial cost. The forest is cleared
away entirely in order to establish grasslands which then remain productive for 6 - 10
years and are then taken over by scrub growth. Myers estimated that 8,000 square miles of
tropical forest were being cleared each year for cattle-raising.
Allowing for overlap (i.e. multiple use) the total amount of
tropical forest being lost due to these four types of human activity comes to 30-37,000
square miles as the amount of forest eliminated and an additional 40,000 square miles
grossly disrupted. The total is 200 square miles of forest per day or 70-77,000 square
miles per year. This corresponds to the area the size of Nebraska each year or an area the
size of Massachusetts each month. The remaining tropical forests cover 3.6 million square
miles, so the rate of loss is about 2% per year.
A different
perspective on deforestation by the Committee For A Constructive Tommorrow can be found at
The Rainforest Issue: Myths and Facts. Even though they can't spell their
organization's name correctly, the authors do raise interesting questions on the data
behind deforestation estimates.
Myers' book was published in 1979, and measurements from
recent satellite imaging and field surveys show that the deforestation rate (in 1987) is
even higher than Myers estimated, between 62,000 and 78,000 square miles per year. This
means that, since Myers' book was published, an additional 1.3 million square miles, or
over one third of the area of tropical forest existing in 1979, has been destroyed.
And in many countries the rates of deforestation have increased dramatically, even since
the early 1980's. In Brazil the rate has tripled to 20-35,000 square miles per year and in
India the rate has increased about 10 fold to 5,800 square miles per year. Satellite
imaging showed that large areas legally designated as forest land were in fact already
virtually treeless.
It has been estimated that 15 - 20% of all species will have
become extinct by the year 2000 because of the destruction of tropical forests. This rate
is about 10,000 times as high as the rate that existed prior to the existence of human
beings. If destruction continues at the present rate, all tropical forest will be gone in
less than 50 years.
Not only does deforestation put species at risk, but it
contributes significantly to carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere. First, it
removes plants which counteract carbon dioxide buildup through photosynthesis. Second,
much of the forest is destroyed by burning, and it has been calculated that forest burning
in Brazil generates about as much carbon dioxide as the industrialized United
States. Global warming in turn may be restricting the habitats of specialized
organisms - for example, it has been suggested that Australian marsupials have retreated
to high altitudes to avoid climatic warming. This has resulted in their populations
being fragmented into small isolated groups which are vulnerable to extinction.
Economic pressures from the developed countries are at least partly responsible for the high rates of deforestation in the third world. Loans from the World Bank and other international lending institutions have supported many projects that cause deforestation, such as the road from Rio to Rondônia, clearing for agriculture and hydro-electric projects. Oil and gas companies are moving in to some of the most pristine remaining areas. The U.S., with 5% of the world's population, consumes more than 25% of the world's solid-wood products and 33% of its paper. The U.S. demand for beef has also led to extensive deforestation in Central America.
The World on Fire: 1997-1998
In 1998 huge numbers of massive forest fires broke out in
many parts of the world, burning an estimated 58,000 square miles. Both tropical and
temperate forests were affected. The fires were blamed on drought conditions related
to the El Niño climatic conditions and/or global warming. Wildfires were raging in
Canada, Siberia (50,000 square miles burned), Mongolia, Alaska, Florida (10,000 square
miles burned), Brazil, Mexico, Greece (400 square miles burned), Indonesia (15 square
miles burned) Australia, Thailand and Rwanda. In many of these places, the fires were
characterized as of "historic proportions" or "the worst on record".
Brazil
Monitoring from satellites shows that huge amounts of forest
were burned in Brazil. The photographs showed over 24,000 fires in Brazil over 41
consecutive days from the beginning of August 1997 - an average of 599 fires per day
compared with 466 in 1996.
In the northern state of Roraima, in the first three months
of 1998 fires lit by farmers and ranchers raged through 2 million acres of savannah and
forest. In August of 1999, 31,000 fires were burning.
The fires are threatening some of the already endangered
wildlife, including the golden lion tamarin. In August 1997, a fire burned 5,500
acres of the Poco das Antas Reserve, the only officially protected area for this species.
Southeast Asia
Thousands of fires were also burning in Southeast Asia in
September - November 1997 - the worst fire season in 15 years. The situation was
exacerbated by the most severe drought in half a century, caused by the severe El Nino
condition. Almost 2 million acres were burnt. In Malaysia the air pollution index reached
600 on a scale where 100 is considered unhealthy. Some of the fires are blamed on
logging companies clearing land for plantations, others are set by small farmers using
slash-and-burn methods. Only 1.5 million square miles remain of the original 6
million square miles of forests in Asia. Each year in Southeast Asia fires, logging,
and conversion to tree plantations and agriculture destroy an additional 14,000 square
miles of rain forests--an area roughly the size of Switzerland. This
destruction of the rain forests threatens many endangered species including tigers,
elephants, orangutans, Sumatran rhinos, and tapirs, as well as hundreds of species of
birds, plants and insects.
Satellite imaging has been used to document the enormous scale of the forest burning problem. More tropical forest burned around the world in 1997 than at any other time in recorded history, according to a report by the World Wildlife Fund.
View satellite images of smoke from the Indonesia fires, 3
September - 16 November 1997 (click on each image):
The damage to wildlife is likely to be enormous, since these
areas are home to many spectacular species of mammals including some of the
worlds most endangered species -- orang-utans, sun bears, Sumatran tigers, Malayan
tapirs and golden lion tamarins. The fires have driven orang-utans, already rapidly
declining due to forest clearing, into populated areas, where the adults have been killed
for food and the young taken for the illegal pet trade.
The smoke has had tremendous human health impact. "Tens
of thousands of illnesses", including chronic bronchitis, emphysema and lung and
cardiovascular diseases have been blamed on the fires. Indonesias President Suharto
has apologized to neighboring countries for the smoke pollution.
Many fires continued to burn in the East Kalimantan Province
of Indonesia until mid-April 1998, when they were finally extinguished by rain. Wildfires
burned 6 million acres of Indonesia between 1997 and 1998.
Who was lighting the fires?
The
rest were from traditional slash-and-burn practices by small farmers and from accidents.
Why weren't they stopped?
What else could be done?
Fires on this scale can cause a permanent change of climate as well as vegetation. When forest is destroyed, less moisture is evaporated into the air, resulting in reduction of rainfall and a vicious cycle as drought leads to more fires. In an even more insidious cycle, the forest fires contribute to global warming by adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, at the same time leaving fewer trees to remove carbon dioxide from the air. The World Wildlife Fund and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature have warned that, unless Governments act now, the fires will be much worse next time the El Niño condition returns. Three of the major Dutch banks have announced they will stop or curtail financing the development of oil palm plantations for which tropical rainforest is being intentionally destroyed.
Migratory Songbirds and Coffee Plantations
Many songbirds in North America are declining because of
modernization of coffee plantations leading to habitat loss in Central and South
America. Until 25 years ago, all coffee was shade-grown. The dramatic increase
in worldwide demand for coffee since then has prompted many coffee growers to switch to
sun-grown techniques in an attempt to increase per acre yield. According to a recent
report from the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, 17 percent of Mexico's, 40 percent of
Costa Rica's, and 69 percent of Columbia's coffee crop is sun-grown. The 150 species
of birds which live on shade-grown coffee plantations, many of which are migratory
songbirds, are losing their habitat as a result. Songbird Coffee, a joint venture
between the American Birding Association and Thanksgiving Coffee Company is marketing
organically shade-grown gourmet coffees. A portion of the revenue goes towards
songbird conservation.
Some
recent progress
An unprecedented agreement was signed
between the World Wildlife Fund and the World Bank at Earth Summit II in June 1997. The
president of the World Bank announced targets for forest conservation that match those
being proposed by the Forests for Life strategy of WWF / International Union for the
Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). The Bank pledged to:
- support the establishment of 50 million hectares of new forest protected areas in the Bank's client countries by the year 2005;
- co-operate to achieve a new Bank target of independent certification of 200 million hectares of well managed forests by 2005, with 100 million hectares in the temperate and boreal regions, and 100 million hectares in tropical forest regions.
Several International bodies are paying more attention to
worldwide forest destruction. They include:
Convention
on Biological Diversity
World
Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development.
WWF has launched a major international campaign to persuade
governments to support its protected areas target - an ecologically representative network
of forest protected areas covering at least 10 per cent of each country's different forest
types by the year 2000. 20 countries have now agreed to the target including Argentina,
Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, People's Republic of China, Colombia,
Greece, Lithuania, Malawi, Mozambique, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Romania, Russian Republic
of Sakha, Slovak Republic, Tunisia and Uzbekistan.
Support is growing for forest certification
programs. Forests for Life has been promoting the idea of identifying and certifying
timber products that come from sustainable harvesting practices, so that businesses and
consumers will know which products to buy. This includes:
persuading
businesses to deal only in certified products
educating
the public so that they buy only certified products
In 1998 Meyer International, the UK's largest timber trader,
announced that it will purchase timber only if it has been certified under the
international Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) program for sustainable forestry. At
a meeting in June 2000, Sweden, Canada and Brazil made new commitments to independent
forest certification.
Non-timber sustainable use of
tropical forest
Forest plants can provide many products other than timber,
including fruits, oils, nuts, sweeteners, resins, tannins, fibers and construction
materials and medicinal compounds. Studies have shown that the value of non-timber forest
products can greatly exceed that of the potential timber harvest in these regions.
Furthermore, exploitation of non-timber products can be more sustainable than timber
harvesting, and can generate income for many local residents, whereas the profits from
timber operations (and cattle ranching) are typically short-lived and made by foreign
corporations. In one area of Brazil, the revenue from the collection of wild rubber and
brazil nuts was shown to be four times as high as the revenue that can be obtained from
cattle-ranching in a corresponding area.
Non-Timber Forest Products | Non-timber forest products
Controlled study of tropical
forest fragmentation
In Brazil there is a law requiring that 50% of the land in
any Amazonian development must remain as uncut forest. When a group of biologists
led by Dr. Thomas Lovejoy heard of some major plans for deforestation for cattle ranching,
in 1979 they were able to arrange for the remaining forest to be left as a series of
experimental plots of different sizes ranging from 2.5 to 25,000 acres. They then
studied the flora and fauna over the succeeding years to see the effect of various degrees
of fragmentation (Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments project). They found many
of the expected effects around the edges of such fragments, which are of course more
serious with the smaller fragments. They also found, unexpectedly, a decrease in
overall biomass in the small fragments - up to 36% of biomass being lost very soon after
isolation in the smaller fragments.
Additional reading on Forests and Deforestation
Gaia Forest Conservation Archives
| The World-Wide Web Virtual Library: Forestry | Other Forest Service Sites | Rainforests
Biodiversity Scale Of Destruction
What you can do
7 things you can do to save the rainforest
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