Group items tagged

Conservation

communities may work harder to protect those resource

locals find work as tour guides and discover that their jobs depend on local conservation efforts

Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE) says that deforestation during the month of May amounted to 268 square miles, a rise of 144 percent over May 2010. 35 percent of the clearing occurred in Mato Grosso, the state where agricultural expansion is fast-occurring.

Minc said the environment ministry will bring criminal charges against all of them. The government will also create an environmental police force with 3,000 heavily armed and specially trained officers to help combat illegal deforestion.

Carlos Minc, the Brazilian environment minister, said the upcoming national elections were partly to blame, with mayors in the Amazon region ignoring illegal loggers in the hope of gaining votes locally.

Forests cover 31% of total land area.   The livelihoods of 1.6 billion people depend on forests.   Forests provide a home to more than 300 million people worldwide.   The total global trade in forest products was valued at around $379 billion in 2005.   Forests are home to 80% of terrestrial biodiversity.

In this high-tech world of metal and plastic, it's easy to forget that many things are still made with good, old-fashioned wood. Countries with lots of forest stand to benefit from the lucrative timber trade, but at what cost to their ecological footprint? Here are five major timber exporters, and who is buying their wood. © WWF / GOOD / SectionDesign The Global Timber Trade, Who's Buying, Who's Selling? In this high-tech world of metal and plastic, it's easy to forget that many things are still made with good, old-fashioned wood. Countries with lots of forest stand to benefit from the lucrative timber trade, but at what cost to their ecological footprint? Here are 5 major timber exporters, and who is buying their wood. Our EarthForestsImportance of ForestsForest conservationTypes of ForestsProblemsSearch Forest News & Resources Priority Forests Amur-Heilong Amazon Borneo Forests Caucasus Carpathians Congo Basin European Alps Himalayas Mediterranean Forests Mekong Forests New Guinea Forests Did you know? The five most forest-rich countries are the Russian Federation, Brazil, Canada, the USA and China, and they account for more than half of the total forest area. Ten countries or areas have no forest at all and an additional 54 have forest on less than 10% of their total land area.

Massive extinctions have occurred five times during the earth's history, the last one was the extinction of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago. Scientists are calling what is occurring now, the sixth mass extinction. The loss of species is about losing the very web of life on Earth

Within the next 30 years as many as half of the species on the earth could die in one of the fastest mass extinctions in the planet's 4.5 billion years history.

There is also the loss of the genetic diversity within species, as well as the loss of diversity of different types of ecosystems ,which can contribute to or hasten whole species extinction.