LONDON: A new study reveals as many as half the tree species in the Amazon tropical forest could face the threat of extinction, but researchers say there may still be a way to save the rainforest.
Nearly half the number of trees that grew on Earth when human civilization began still grace this planet, according to a tree census conducted earlier this year. But until now, scientists knew little about how deforestation affected individual species.
So researchers conducted an extensive study of Amazonian tree species to assess the diversity of the world’s largest tropical rainforest.
More than 15,000 tree species may live in the dense Amazon rainforest. But some 8,690 of those species could face the threat of extinction, according to the paper published Friday in the journal Science Advances. And because scientists have seen Amazonian trends mirrored in tropical forests across the world, more than 40,000 tropical tree species could face the same risk, the researchers say.
“We aren’t saying that the situation in the Amazon has suddenly gotten worse for tree species,” study co-author Nigel Pitman said in a press release. “We’re just offering a new estimate of how tree species have been affected by historical deforestation, and how they’ll be affected by forest loss in the future.”
The population dynamics of Amazon tree species has been studied before, but this is the first study to use the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s parameters to define threatened and endangered species.
