Over the past 40 years, the living conditions for forest animals has drastically deteriorated. Earth is losing biodiversity at a rate seen only during mass extinctions. It’s at a point now that vertebrate populations have more than halved. The rainforests most affected by this are in South America and Africa.
According to a study titled Below The Canopy published by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Berlin, the global population of forest-dwelling vertebrates has plummeted since 1970. The study discovered this by tracking the development of 268 vertebrate species and 455 populations in forests around the world.
Their analysis revealed that the numbers of birds, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles have dropped by an average of 53% in the period between 1970 and 2014. The main reasons for the massive decline in populations are deforestation and degradation of forests, according to the study.
Upon seeing the urgency of this situation from the figures, the WWF called on the international community to declare a global forest emergency and to begin taking steps to reverse the trend by adopting sustainable forestry policies and beginning the process of restoring lost forest habitats.
Why does this matter? Because a rich variety of animal species is vital to forest ecosystems. The WWF researchers stress that a decline in forest vertebrates has “serious consequences for forest integrity and climate change.” This is due to the role that particular vertebrate species play in forest regeneration and carbon storage. For instance, a couple of essential functions for forest ecosystems performed by animals include pollination and seed dispersal.
Susanne Winter, program director at WWF Germany, said:
Forests are our greatest natural ally in the fight against global warming. If we want to reverse the worldwide decline in biodiversity and prevent the climate crisis, we need to protect the forests and the species living there.
Animals and forests live in symbiosis, and if certain species dwindle, flora will begin to suffer. Forests depend on an intact animal world to perform functions essential to life. Without animals, it is harder for forests to absorb carbon, as tree species important for protecting the climate could be lost without animals.
Loss of habitat may be the main reason the world’s forest animals are under threat, however, it is surely not the only one. Other factors harming population levels include, over exploitation, invasive species, climate change, and disease, say the researchers. In other words, even though the primary driver of population loss has been identified as forest degradation, restoring forests alone would not solve the problem.
As overwhelming as it all seems, there is hope in recovery if local communities would engage to address “over exploitation of wildlife, and tackling invasive species to address the multiple pressures on forest species”, explains the WWF.
It is possible to increase animal populations by adopting conservation measures. It has worked already in some parts of the world. For example, the population of gorillas in Central and East Africa and that of capuchin monkeys in Costa Rica have been restored. “Success stories show that with the right conservation strategies, forest vertebrate populations can recover,” a WWF report said.
The Living Planet Report explains everything in detail. It is WWF’s flagship publication released every two years that provides the scientific evidence to what nature has been telling us repeatedly: human development and consumption are having devastating impacts on wildlife, forests, oceans, rivers and climate.
