{"id":6048,"date":"2019-10-22T08:19:40","date_gmt":"2019-10-22T05:19:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=6048"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:37","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:37","slug":"animals-are-disappearing-from-forests-with-grave-consequences-for-the-fight-against-climate-breakdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/10\/22\/animals-are-disappearing-from-forests-with-grave-consequences-for-the-fight-against-climate-breakdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Animals Are Disappearing From Forests, With Grave Consequences For The Fight Against Climate Breakdown"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>By The Conversation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s tempting to think that our forests would be fine if we\ncould simply stop trees being felled&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/the-amazon-fire-crisis-has-been-500-years-in-the-making-as-brazils-indigenous-people-know-only-too-well-122572\">or\nburnt<\/a>. But forests \u2013 particularly tropical ones \u2013 are more than just trees.\nThey\u2019re also the animals that skulk and swoop among them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Worryingly, these furry and feathered companions are&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wwf.org.uk\/sites\/default\/files\/2018-10\/wwfintl_livingplanet_full.pdf\">rapidly\ndisappearing<\/a>&nbsp;\u2013 and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-019-12539-1\">our new research<\/a>&nbsp;indicates\nthat this will have grave repercussions for the role forests play in combating\nclimate breakdown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Healthy tropical forests swarm with life. Beyond myriad invertebrates, there are seed-eating rodents, a range of leaf eaters, birds of all kinds, and often primates. However,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wwf.org.uk\/sites\/default\/files\/2019-08\/BelowTheCanopyReport.pdf\">many forests have already lost most of their largest animals<\/a>, mainly as a result of hunting to supply a growing\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/royalsocietypublishing.org\/doi\/full\/10.1098\/rsos.160498\">bushmeat<\/a>\u00a0trade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hunting isn\u2019t the only reason. Thanks to deforestation for\nfarmland and logging, many forests today are highly fragmented. The small,\nunconnected patches that remain&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/worlds-forests-are-fragmenting-into-tiny-patches-risking-mass-extinctions-39029\">aren\u2019t\nbig enough<\/a>&nbsp;to support populations of the largest species, which tend\nto need more space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The disappearance of animals from otherwise intact habitats\nis known as&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/science.sciencemag.org\/content\/345\/6195\/401\">defaunation<\/a>,\nand it is leading to a growing number of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/journals.plos.org\/plosbiology\/article?id=10.1371\/journal.pbio.3000247\">empty\nforests<\/a>&nbsp;not just in tropical countries, but around the world. The UK\nhas already lost most of its largest species (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wildlifetrusts.org\/extinct-british-wildlife\">think lynx,\nwolf, and wisent<\/a>), while woodland bird numbers have&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/nbn.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/State-of-Nature-2019-UK-full-report.pdf\">declined\nby a quarter since 1970<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The impacts of this defaunation have attracted the attention\nof the world\u2019s conservation scientists, but studies to date have usually been\ncarried out at single locations. Consequently, we lack a worldwide picture that\ntakes into account different types of forest and the diversity of animals that\nare disappearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/animals-are-disappearing-from-forests-with-grave-consequences-for-the-fight-against-climate-breakdown-new-research-124746\">Read\nmore\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By The Conversation It\u2019s tempting to think that our forests would be fine if we could simply stop trees being felled&nbsp;or burnt. But forests \u2013 particularly tropical ones \u2013 are&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6049,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}