Excerpt
HEALTHY forests are those that satisfy human needs, whose ecological systems function well, and whose productivity for all resources is maintained for future generations. On all three counts, conditions in the worlds tropical forests send up red flags.
Tropical forests are experiencing conversion to agricultural uses, including pasture, at alarming rates. By some estimates, 44,000 square miles of tropical forests-an area about the size of Louisiana-are lost each year to human encroachment. Hardest hit are the forests of Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, Mexico, and Nigeria. In many places, crises are brewing. Millions are homeless in Bangladesh, for example, as flood waters pour down from the deforested slopes of the Himalayas. When forests are cleared or subjected to unsustainable logging operations, loss of tropical forest cover also destroys wildlife habitat, threatening the survival of countless species of plant and animal life before scientists even know what exists.
Large expanses of tropical land face severe, long-term decline in the land's productive capacity from overharvesting and poor management. If and how the productivity of this land can be restored is not yet known. The reduced capacity of the tropical landscape to provide its many products and benefits is …
Footnotes
Russell E. Train is chairman of the board, World Wildlife Fund and The Conservation Foundation, 1250 24th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20037. This “Viewpoint” was extracted from his keynote address at the recent Society of American Foresters annual meeting in Rochester, New York.
- Copyright 1988 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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