Targets to Save World’s Forests Won’t be Met by 2010

The world’s forests are shrinking at an alarming rate – some disappearing altogether – and we know we’ve got to do something about it. But, so far, efforts to save forests around the globe simply aren’t enough to meet the targets set under the Convention for Biological Diversity (CBD), according to a new analysis.

From Nature.com:

The study is the first attempt to work out how much of the globe’s 20 major types of forest are safeguarded. It shows that only 7.7% are currently protected according to categories established by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), headquartered in Gland, Switzerland. The work is based on the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization’s definition of a forest — that is, an area of land more than 0.5 hectares in size with more than 10% canopy cover.

“According to our analysis, the CBD targets will not be met,” says Neil Burgess, a conservation scientist at the University of Cambridge, UK, and one of the study’s authors.

John Healy, a forest ecologist at the University of Wales, Bangor, says that the study is important because it looks at forest protection in ecoregions and by forest type, rather than just total forest cover. “They have carried out the study in a far more biogeographically and ecologically meaningful way [than previous studies]“, he says.

But, he adds, “The reality is we don’t know whether the protection status is being enforced on the ground.”

The question now is, what can we do to help? There are a variety of charities and nature conservation organizations that work to preserve the world’s forests including the Nature Conservancy, Greenpeace, WWF, The Sierra Club and The Heritage Forests Campaign (which focuses on national forests in America).

Donate funds, volunteer your time or help spread the word. Some retail sites also donate a portion of each purchase to forest conservation, like The Rainforest Site Store.

Link [Nature.com]
Photo credit: Flickr user zoutedrop

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