Rainforest loss may have been overstated, scientists

Evidence rainforests regenerate after logging is causing a row in the scientific world with some experts claiming fewer species will go extinct.

Louise Gray, The Telegraph 11 Jan 09;

Satellite data to be debated by top scientists show huge tracts of abandoned tropical forests that were once logged or farmed are regrowing.

Some researchers contend that this process has been inadequately factored into estimates of future species loss – but others maintain that only 50 to 80 per cent of plant species may return to logged or altered forests.

Scientists meeting at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington are debating extinction rates in the tropics.

Conservationists argue that the loss of the rainforests due to logging, climate change and other factors, is fuelling catastrophic rates of extinction – despite the evidence of rainforest regrowth in many places.

However Joseph Wright of the Panama-based Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute has pointed out that the tropics now have more protected land than North America, Europe or Japan.

In a 2006 study he asserted that "large areas of tropical forest cover will remain in 2030 and beyond.... We believe that the area covered by tropical forest will never fall to the exceedingly low levels that are often predicted and that extinction will threaten a smaller proportion of tropical forest species than previously predicted."

Cristian Samper, director of the National Museum of Natural History, who will preside at the event, said: "By bringing together the world's foremost authorities on different aspects of rainforest science, we hope to achieve new insights into a situation with potentially profound implications for all species, ours included."