- LONDON (Reuters) - Efforts to save most of the world's rainforests are
doomed to failure and should be abandoned, a group of European scientists
said in a report.
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- They said intensive farming and logging
have left many rainforests beyond repair and suggested that conservationists
concentrate on preserving the few areas that are not yet under pressure.
-
- Reporting in the New Scientist magazine
on Wednesday, scientists at the European Commission's Joint Research Center
in Italy gave a bleak outlook.
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- "The pressures to remove the forests
are too great to be stopped, especially in places like Southeast Asia,"
said Frederic Achard of the Research Center.
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- The research team of 12 experts in tropical
forests said there was no hope of stopping deforestation by logging companies
and farmers in major rainforest regions such as Indonesia and much of the
Brazilian Amazon.
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- "There is very little we can do
to change the politics of these ountries," Achard said.
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- Parts of the rainforests of the central
Amazon Basin, Congo and New Guinea might be saved however and priority
should be given to identifying and protecting areas of high biodiversity
in these zones, the research center said.
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- The Indonesian island of Sumatra was
pinpointed as the hottest of the deforestation hot spots. An island twice
the size of Britain, it has lost virtually all its lowland forests in just
25 years, along with the animals that lived in them.
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