Deforestation threatening SE Asian species: Study
Deforestation threatening SE Asian species: Study
Reuters, London
Deforestation could lead to the disappearance of significant amounts of Southeast Asia's flora and fauna within the next 100 years, scientists said on Wednesday.
Rapid and large-scale loss of natural habitats through deforestation for agriculture and urban development have already damaged the area's biodiversity, they say. Without major conservation efforts the situation is likely to get much worse.
"We predict the overall loss of 13-42 percent of regional populations due to the effects of deforestation in Southeast Asia by the end of the present century," said Barry Brook of the Northern Territory University in Darwin, Australia.
Brook and scientists from Kyoto University in Japan said at least half of the disappearing species will represent global extinctions.
Although the humid tropics account for a significant part of the Earth's biodiversity, the researchers said there is not much data on the loss of species and what does exist is anecdotal.
Brook and his team studied the number of local extinctions that have occurred in Singapore over the past 183 years to calculate the loss over the next century.
Their research, which is reported in the science journal Nature, shows that during that time the habitats of land and freshwater species have declined by 95 percent.
It also indicated that more than 50 percent of the remaining biodiversity in Singapore is in forest reserves which comprise only 0.25 percent of Singapore's area.
The loss of the reserves would more than double the fraction of species driven to extinction, according to the research.
Brook said the future prospects for Singapore's biodiversity look bleak because 77 percent of the island's species are considered threatened by the Swiss-based World Conservation Union which monitors disappearing species.
"Clearly, large-scale conservation efforts need to be implemented if these regional rates of extinction are to be abated," Brook added.