Tropical Rainforests - Are They Being Permanently Destroyed?

A Public Broadcasting Service ( PBS ) internet site called The Rainforests warns that tropical "rainforests are disappearing as growing populations increase the demand for land space and natural resources. Scientists estimate that humans eliminate at least one acre of rainforest every minute. The forests are cleared to make room for cities, road, farms, and ranches. But with the trees go plants and animals that depend on the rainforest to survive." Not very encouraging if found to be true - downright scary if you are to believe most of the "facts" presented on the Internet.

But there has been a major scientific study showing that eight years after tropical trees in Indonesia were harvested, the rainforest looked like nearby unlogged forestland. Much of the forest's diversity was intact as well. The Indonesian forest has long been considered a rainforest hotspot.

"These results go against a lot of popular dogma," says Charles Cannon, a Duke University doctoral student in botany who published the work in a recent issue of the journal Science . "The results to me are very preliminary, but I think the main point to take from this is that logged forests are not necessarily destroyed (see PDF file). If they're selectively logged in one cut, there is a great deal of disturbance and damage. But the forests are more resilient than perhaps people have given them credit for." Mr. Cannon was quoted in the Society of American Foresters The Forestry Source .

Cannon, with two co-authors from Dartmouth College and the Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology at Harvard University's Peabody Museum , selected sites logged either one or eight years before. The logged sites were compared with areas that had not been previously been harvested.

According to The Forestry Source , "these detailed comparisons showed that areas logged just a year before had 43 percent fewer different species of these smaller trees than did unlogged sites." A completely different picture developed at sites that had been given eight years to recover from logging.

The Science report suggested the "species richness of small trees in the eight-year logged site approached that of unlogged forest," and also acknowledged that what is happening is still a puzzle. The study also suggests these sites are never going to be exactly like their former natural state.

The Cannon Study
Tree Species Diversity in Logged Rainforests abstract as published in SCIENCE

Important Rainforest Links
A collection of the best rainforest sites.

Tropical Rain Forest Information Center
Michigan State University's excellent site for rainforest imagery and a rainforest report card.

Science in the Rainforest
The Public Broadcasting Service's take on rainforest issues.

Tropical Forest Ecology
The Woods Hole Research Center's Tropical Forestry Ecology.

Rainforest Issues Forum
A Sierra Club based presentation of rainforest issues.