Originally published October 3 2005
Smithsonian scientist emphasizes the need for public education about the role of tropical forests
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
S. Josef Wright, of the Smithsmonian Tropical Research Institute, has recently challenged the scientific community with the task of public education about the importance of tropical forests, which, in spite of their support of over two-thirds of the human population, are currently jeopardized by various economic interests.
Tropical forest landscapes are changing rapidly in the eyes of scientists working on tropical monitoring plots around the globe, while human populations and their economic activities grow.
Old-growth forests become agricultural lands, degraded land is abandoned, urbanization intensifies, and the populations of tropical countries will increase by two billion over the next 25 years.
Globally, 18% of all tropical and subtropical moist forest and 9% of all tropical dry forests are nominally protected by governments.
On Barro Colorado Island (BCI) administered by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in the Republic of Panama, the old-growth forest has escaped fire and agriculture for at least 1500 years.
STRI's Center for Tropical Forest Science (CTFS) has repeatedly censused all steams one centimeter of diameter or more at 1.3 m height in a 50-hectare plot every five years since 1985.
Wright notes that the aboveground biomass on BCI was almost constant since the first census.
In another protected area, the Kibale National Park in Uganda, a 30-year record suggests that reproductive activity by forest trees is increasing; and at La Selva, Costa Rica, diameter-growth rates decreased among surviving individuals for cohorts of nine species measured annually for 17 years.
Wright, who has studied tropical forests and its plant and animal inhabitants since the late '70 at STRI, encourages tropical scientists to conduct assessments based on existing long-term records.
Conservation scientists must help to mitigate the number of species lost to extinction by enhancing the effectiveness of the network of protected areas.
It is those who will eventually demand that governments invest in research and conservation of tropical forests and who will work to slow the rapid, unsustainable growth of human populations in the tropics."
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