Silent Forests Are Like a Cancer

Think wildlife conservation is a dilettantish luxury affordable only by urbanized nabobs?  Think again, Sherlock!  A new study in the prestigious journal, Nature, finds that Asian rainforest which traps millions of tons of carbon depends on fruit eating fauna to disperse seeds. The complete loss of these species results in the region's carbon storage capacity dropping by up to 3%.  Saving these creatures in the age of anthropomorphic warming may save your life, but wildlife is being decimated by snaring for bushmeat, poaching, and habitat fragmentation.

seed eating hornbill thretened by illegal poaching

The published study focused on a plot in  Khao Yai National Park, two and half hours from the Bangkok megalopolis where nearly on-third of the tree species depend on frugivores. [photo credit: W. Chathorn] Primates, especially gibbons, play an important role in diversify juvenile trees says the lead author, Wirong Chanthorn, professor of plant ecology at Kasetsart University, Bangkok.  Researchers found that by removing tree species dependent on seed dispersal by frugivores in a 74 acre study plot, the amount of carbon storage declined by has much as 3% when all such tree species were removed.  Previous similar studies in America and Africa have reached consistent results, with the Asian study showing declines in carbon storage similar to South America.  Because of the regions burgeoning human population, slash an burn subsistence agriculture, logging, and intense commercial plantation clearance, Asia forest biodiversity and  storage capacity are in the most immediate danger of collapse.

A 2016 study found that 113 species are threatened by hunting in Southeast Asia for the usual reasons: bushmeat, traditional medicine, and body parts.  Anti-poaching and logging patrols have increased, but are still far behind extractors. Rosewood can bring $50,000 per cubic meter and is in high demand for upscale furniture in China.  Elephant ivory is worth upwards of $1500 per pound and a mature tiger can cost as much as $50,000.  Such monetary figures often make conservation merely conversation.  Experts say the billions the illegal trade in wildlife and lumber must be tracked down, confiscated and diverted to biodiversity recovery.  Snares pose the biggest threat to forest wildlife.  In five years rangers removed 200,000 snares in five protect areas, a fraction of the number plaguing Asian forests. 

One expert said, wildlife is the blood of the forest, which most people realize are the Earth's lungs, but "a forest without wildlife is like a lung with cancer."  It is for reasons like this one that the Roman Catholic Church is considering adding ecocide or "ecological sin" to its official teachings or catechism.  In a recent speech, Pope Francis said, ‘ecocide’ covers “the massive contamination of air, land and water resources, the large-scale destruction of flora and fauna and any action capable of producing an ecological disaster or destroying an ecosystem.”  He also told Latin American bishops gathered at a conference that the Amazon Basin needs to be protected from mining and deforestation, adding that the world's poor are, "threatened by predatory models of development" in areas of rich natural resources such as the Amazon rainforest.