Conservation News: Forests, Snow Leopards, and Lions

Will Rainforests be a Thing of the Past 100 Years From Now?

Thirty years ago, a wide belt of rainforest circled the earth, covering Latin America, southeast Asia, and Africa. However, today, it is being rapidly replaced by great swathes of palm oil trees and rubber plantations, land cleared for cattle grazing, soya farming, expanding cities, dams, and logging. At current rates of deforestation, scientists are estimating that rainforests will vanish altogether in a century unless poor nations are helped to preserve them.

For thousands of years, people have been deforesting the tropics for timber and farming, but that is nothing compared to how humans have been physically transforming the Earth these past few centuries. Every year, about 18 million hectares of forest – an area the size of England and Wales – is felled. It is estimated that in the past forty years, possibly 1 billion hectares has been cleared. That’s equivalent to the size of Europe.

Based off of the latest satellite analysis, half the world’s rainforests have been razed in the past century. Particularly in the last 15 years, new hotspots have emerged globally from Cambodia to Liberia.

Deforestation in Bhutan. Forests are vital stocks of carbon and water resources (Flickr/ World Bank)