Vanishing of the Forests

We are destroying the world’s precious ancient forests at an unprecedented rate. An area of natural forest the size of a soccer pitch is cut down every two seconds. A quarter of the forest lost in the last 10,000 years has been destroyed in the last 30 years.

Forest loss has a direct link to loss of biodiversity. The current extinction rate of plant and animal species is around 1,000 times faster than it was in pre-human times - and this will increase to 10,000 times faster by 2050.Scientists predict that the Earth is entering the sixth major extinction event in its history.

From the Amazon to the Philippines, world’s tropical forests are vanishing at a much faster rate than previously reported, says a new study that analyzed satellite images of 80 percent of the world’s tropical forests.

Using more than 5,000 satellite images taken in 1990, 2000, 2005 and 2010, a team of forest researchers from the University of Maryland found that the annual rate of deforestation from 1990 to 2010 was 62 percent higher than the previous decade. The new finding challenged the previous assessments by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which said deforestation actually decreased 25 percent in the same time period.

A study suggested Brazil took the biggest hit with an annual 0.6 million-hectare loss (around 2,300 square miles), making up for almost half of Latin America’s net forest losses. Tropical Asia followed closely with 0.8 million hectares (about 3,100 square miles) lost every year, especially in Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand and Philippines.

From 1990 to 2000, the annual net of forest loss across all of 34 countries in the study was about 4 million hectares (about 15,000 square miles) per year. From 2000 to 2010, the net forest loss increased 62 percent to 6.5 million hectares (about 25,000 square miles) – roughly the size of Sri Lanka — per year.

The view from space puts vanishing forests in a pretty stark light.Data from satellite images reveal that forest cover losses far outstripped forest regrowth in the first dozen years of the 21st century.The globe gained 800,000 square kilometres (about 500,000 square miles) of forest canopy in that time but lost 2.3 million square kilometres (about 1.4 million square miles) in other areas between 2001 to 2012.

It shows us the remaining large forest areas and lets us compare them directly and accurately with the extent of Earth's original forest cover for the first time. This groundbreaking research shows that the world's remaining ancient forests are in crisis and that fewer intact forest landscapes than previously thought are left.

To save them, we must act now. Only intact forest landscapes of several thousands of square kilometres are large enough to sustain healthy populations of many larger forest animals like jaguars, bears, tigers and forest elephants. They are also better able to adapt to the changing global climate.

The main factors responsible for increasing deforestation include the increase in urban population, growth of agriculture and logging, according to NASA. Reuters reports the loss of tropical forests is responsible for about 10 percent of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change.

To preserve these last intact forests and the biodiversity they support, we must protect large, unbroken areas from further industrial exploitation.The moment a road or pipeline is built the forest and its precious balance of interdependent species begins to be destroyed.