Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.91.970307160101.382A-100000@fox.ksu.ksu.edu> Date: Fri, 7 Mar 1997 16:01:22 -0600 From: kerry miller <mailto:astingsh@KSU.EDU> Subject: 80% of World's Old Forest Gone (fwd) To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
---------- Forwarded message ----------
March 4, 1997
Web posted at: 3:30 p.m. EST
From Correspondent Natalie Pawelski
(CNN) -- Nearly 80 percent of the world's original forests are gone,
says a newly released study, and the rest are in serious danger from
increased human activity.
The World Resources Institute released the study Tuesday, showing
how such forests have dramatically receded across the planet in the
last 8,000 years -- most notably in the last three decades. New
forests have grown in many places, but WRI says the loss of the
virgin forests is a crucial problem. Sizer
"Humankind has so far destroyed about four-fifths of the world's
natural forests," said Nigel Sizer, an associate with the WRI.
WRI compiled its data from current satellite imagery along with
climate data and other information used to gauge forest cover 8,000
years ago. Forest experts from around the world assessed the
remaining forests' health and threatening conditions.
In the United States, only about 1 per cent of the ancient forests
that once covered the lower 48 states remains, most of it in three
combined park and wilderness areas in the northern Rockies and the
northern Cascades in Washington. stump
The study says 76 other countries -- including all of North Africa
and the Middle East and nearly all of Europe -- have lost all their
original forests.
Of the unspoiled forests that survive, half are in the cold zone
just south of the tundra in Russia, Alaska and Canada. Brazil is
home to a sizable chunk of virgin forest as well, but in the
tropics, international logging companies are an emerging threat.
Those forests, WRI says, are the only ones left in the world large
enough to survive indefinitely without human intervention.
But Sizer says that logging companies are already proposing to log
as much as 70 percent of small countries like Guyana and Surinam,
and are moving into larger countries like Brazil.
As human populations grow, expansion of civilization follows --
humans need more space, and use more resources for what they
consider the necessities of their increasingly civilized lives.
But as civilization spreads, trees come down and forests disappear.
WRI says if humankind isn't careful, the rest of the world's
unspoiled forests could disappear within the next few decades.
"The question this report begs of society is when is enough enough?"
says Sizer. "How much more can we afford to lose?"