Many Amazon trees endangered

A new study has found more than half of all tree species in the Amazon could be facing extinction if deforestation trends continue.

Clearing of trees is a major problem worldwide and even the Amazon, the world’s most diverse forest is also affected by it. A new study has found that majority of tree species in Amazon are risked by logging and also ought to be provided as endangered under global Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List. The second scenario, in which governments enacted stronger preservation regulations, estimated that 21 per cent of the forest would be destroyed by 2050. By 2050, the study says it’s projected to lose another 9 to 28 percent.

“Either we stand up and protect these critical parks and indigenous reserves, or deforestation will erode them until we see large-scale extinctions”, said lead author Hans ter Steege of Naturalis Biodiversity Centre in the Netherlands. Among the more than 5,000 tree species in deep trouble: the ones that produce Brazil nuts and mahogany.

Fortunately, protected areas and indigenous territories now cover over half of the Amazon Basin, and contain sizable populations of most threatened tree species, the study said, adding that those areas, if properly managed, will protect most of the threatened species. Furthermore, a few of the tree plot data was collected through the Museum’s rapid inventory program, in which ecologists, biologists, and anthropologists travel to the Amazon and take stock of the plants, animals, and people who live there. The researchers claimed that the Amazon is making efforts to extend parks and protected areas, which is a thing they assign a huge importance. The new study estimates that up to 8,690 of those species may face extinction.

However, parks and reserves will only prevent extinction of threatened species, the paper emphasizes, if they suffer no further degradation, said Peres from the School of Environmental Sciences in Norwich, UK.

“It’s a battle we’re going to see play out in our lifetimes”, he said.

“We really wanted to communicate our results in a language that is shared throughout Amazonia and the tropics”, Dr. Pitman, a researcher at Duke University’s Center for Tropical Conservation, tells The Christian Science Monitor in a phone interview.

These range from wild populations of economically important food crops like the Brazil nut, açaí fruit and heart of palm, to valuable timber species, to several hundred species that Amazonian residents depend upon for fruits, seeds, thatch, medicines, latex and essential oils, Pitman said.