From Cambodia to California: The world’s top 10 most threatened forests

By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com
February 02, 2011 Growing populations, expanding agriculture, commodities such as palm oil and paper, logging, urban sprawl, mining, and other human impacts have pushed many of the world’s great forests to the brink. Yet scientists, environmentalists, and even some policymakers increasingly warn that forests are worth more standing than felled. They argue that by safeguarding vulnerable biodiversity, sequestering carbon, controlling erosion, and providing fresh water, forests provide services to humanity, not to mention the unquantifiable importance of having wild places in an increasingly human-modified world. Still, the decline of the world’s forests continues: the FAO estimating that around 10 million hectares of tropical forest are lost every year. Of course, some of these forests are more imperiled than others, and a new analysis by Conservation International (CI) has cataloged the world’s 10 most threatened forests. The list catalogs forests that have already lost 90% of their original extent, but are still hotspots for biodiversity, represented by at least 1,500 recorded endemic species of plants in each forest. According to CI, Asian-Pacific forests are the most imperiled in the world with five of the top 10 forests, including the first four. In contrast, Africa has three of the top 10 (when one includes the island of Madagascar), while South American and North America have one each. While policymakers have focused on the important role forests play in sequestering carbon—depending on the year 10-15% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions comes from deforestation—Tracy Farrell, Senior Director Freshwater Conservation Program at CI says that the role of forests in providing fresh water will become increasingly important during this century. “As the global population is projected to grow from 6 to 9 billion people over the next 30 years, the access to water will only get increasingly more difficult if millions of hectares of tropical forests continue to be burned each year. Other than expensive desalinization plants, we haven’t yet found a way to increase our supplies of fresh water, so we need to protect the remaining forests around the world if we want to keep our sources of fresh water.” Harboring an estimated 80% of the world’s terrestrial species, the loss of forests also means an increasing likelihood of mass extinction, which some scientists say is already occurring. But biodiversity, like the forests they inhabit, provide essential services: pollination, food production, and new medicinal discoveries among others. 1. Indo-Burma With only 5% of this once great Southeast Asian forest remaining, the Indo-Burma forest is one of the world’s most threatened, yet the rivers and floodplain wetlands of this forest provide freshwater, food, and economic opportunity for many of Southeast Asia’s massive population. The forests, and the waters they protect, are being impacted by draining for rice agriculture, hydro-electric dams for electricity, overfishing, and conversion of mangrove forests for shrimp aquaculture. …

From Cambodia to California: the world’s top 10 most threatened forests