By Jake Buehler
Much of the Amazon’s biodiversity is under fire — literally.
In the last two decades, deforestation and forest fires have encroached on the ranges of thousands of plant and animal species in the Amazon rainforest, including up to 85 percent of threatened species in the region, researchers report September 1 in Nature.
The extent of the damage is closely tied to the enforcement, or lack thereof, of regulations in Brazil aimed at protecting the forest from widespread logging as well as the fires often used to clear open space in the forest and other encroachments. The findings illustrate the key role that forest use regulations have in the fate of the Amazon rainforest, the researchers argue.
Threats to the survival of this biodiversity could have long-term effects. Biodiversity boosts a forest’s resilience to drought, says Arie Staal, an ecologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands who was not involved with this research. A deep bench of tree species allows the plants to replace those that may not survive drought conditions, he says. “If fire-impacted area continues to rise, not only does the Amazon lose forest cover, but also some of its capacity to cope with the changing climate.”