Forests disappearing at a rapid pace in the Congo River Basin
Fifty years is all it would take to destroy two-thirds of the forests in the Congo River Basin. Currently, about 3.7 million acres of forest each year is lost to logging, agriculture, and road development (among other things). In a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report, Laurent Somé, WWF’s Central African Regional Office Director, briefly touches on some of the problems associated with deforestation:
“Tropical forest is vanishing at a rate of 5 percent a decade, wrecking habitats and releasing 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year, which is a fifth of global greenhouse emissions.”
The WWF report further elaborates:
“The region is blanketed by a patchwork quilt of logging concessions. While the logging itself is usually selective and does little damage, the associated roads, infrastructure and migration degrade surrounding landscape and result in massive wildlife depletion.”
Recent posts have raised the important issue that deforestation and habitat destruction are contributing to the spread of Ebola — in which the importance of forests could not be clearer. The WWF and other organizations (like the Wildlife Conservation Society) are working to promote awareness of this severe situation in hopes of saving the land and its inhabitants. Reuters UK reports that the WWF, which in the past two decades has protected millions of acres, is in the process of gaining 300,000 more protected acres in the next few months.
I don’t find this website very good for finding informaton. It would be better if you put some pictures and britened the place up!
Sally
January 24, 2007 at 8:39 am
Sally,
I don’t quite know what to say to your comment. I’m speechless to be frank.
This site is a blog. A blog is more written than not. There are examples of photo blogs, video blogs, podcasts, etc. but those are aspects of this site that are not focused on at this time. In the past, we have posted some content with photos. Some of our posts have even just focused on entertaining videos. There’s plenty of places with ‘cheer-me-up’ photos of chimpanzees and what not. I suggest you look around the site before you make a ignorant statement that this place needs to be brightened up.
We intend to focus on research and news that’s impacting the field of primatology. At times, we believe those are just as informative, if not more, than ‘some pictures.’
Thanks for the criticism, I do appreciate it… but it is misdirected in my opinion.
Kambiz
P.S. Have you noticed the 75 or so random images of primates rotating randomly up at the top of the page, under the header?
Kambiz
January 24, 2007 at 5:29 pm