More than half of the species of trees in the Amazon are threatened, he warned a study in which more than 150 scientists from 21 participating countries.
So far there was no reliable estimate on how many tree species were threatened.
If the current rate of deforestation continues, up to 57% of the Amazonian forest species meet in the next decades the requirements to be classified as “endangered” in the Red List compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, IUCN for its initials in English, according to the researchers.
However, if protected areas and indigenous territories are preserved, the number of threatened species will not exceed one third of the total.
as well known and representative trees of the region and those producing Brazil nuts, palm hearts and açaí and cocoa They are among the endangered species.
But you can still save the threatened tree species in the Amazon if properly managed parks and existing reserves, said William Laurance of James Cook University in Australia, one of the authors of the study published in the journal Science Advances.
The areas and indigenous territories cover half the Amazon account and is very likely to contain a lot of the most endangered species of trees.
“Many of the species would be threatened are used by Amazonian daily residents and many others are key to the Amazonian economies,” said the environmentalist Nigel Pitman of the Field Museum in Chicago, another of the authors.
The trees are also important ecosystems by controlling erosion and moderate climate, he said.
The study compared data from nearly 1,500 sites with current maps and projected deforestation to estimate how many Species have been lost and where.
The investigation covered almost 5.5 million square kilometers in Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname and French Guyana.
The work was led by Pitman and Hans ter Steege the Center for Biodiversity Naturalis in the Netherlands.
“Bomb Threat”
Amazon believes that the most diverse forest on the planet, could house more than 15,000 different species of trees.
“We estimate that more than half of all species could become extinct,” said another author of the study, Carlos Peres, of the School of Environmental Studies, University of East Anglia in England.
“Fortunately protected areas and indigenous reserves now cover more than half of the Amazon basin and probably harbor a considerable percentage of the most threatened species”.
Peres warned that protected areas face a “barrage of threats, from building dams to mining projects, droughts and fires.”
“Our research is a call to increase efforts to discover and will protect this diversity before inevitably become extinct, “he said
Laurance said for his part.” or we stand and protect these parks and indigenous reserves in critical condition or deforestation will destroy until we see extinctions large scale “.
Another of the study’s authors, Rafael Salomão, Emílio Goeldi Museum in Belem, Brazil, warned that” the vast majority of protected areas in the Amazon do not have a plan or budget management and have very few staff qualified resident “.
Meat, soy and palm oil
The Amazonian forests have lost 12% extension and is projected to lose an additional 9 to 28% by 2050.
The Amazon rainforest covers an area of 6.1 million square kilometers and 60% are in Brazil. While Brazil has reduced deforestation in the last decade, deforestation is increasing in Boliva and Peru.
It is estimated that every day is lost due to deforestation an area equivalent to about 4,500 football stadiums or three stages per minute, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature, WWF for its acronym in English.
On the other hand, it is expected that the demand for beef, soya and palm oil, one of the principals factors that drives deforestation, increase in coming years.
“It’s a battle to be waged in our time,” Laurance he said.
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell 18% in the last 12 months, said this month the environment minister of that country, Isabella Teixeira.
She said that 4,848 square kilometers of the Amazon rainforest were destroyed between August 2013 and July 2014. The figure represents a fall compared to the same period last year, when 5,891 square kilometers were lost, on the eve of the adoption of the controversial Forest Code.
The legislation, passed after more than a decade Pressure by organizations of farmers, relaxed restrictions on logging in the river banks.
Despite the decline from the previous year, Brazil “is still far from reaching its goal of minimal deforestation” warned the British newspaper The Guardian Marco Lentini, the Brazilian office of WWF.
Brazil pledged to reduce deforestation at 3,900 km per year by 2020.
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