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The Present Status and Future Prospects of Tropical Moist Forests

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

Norman Myers
Norman Myers
Affiliation:
Consultant in Conservation and Development, P.O. Box 48197, Nairobi, Kenya.
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Extract

Tropical moist forests (TMFs) of ‘primary’ status, whether rain-forests or ‘seasonal’ biomes, are currently undergoing widespread conversion—including disruption, degradation, impoverishment, depletion, and outright destruction. These are forms of conversion that range in degree from marginal modification to fundamental transformation—at rates that are anticipated to leave large parts of the biomes involved in grossly altered states, if not eliminated altogether, by the end of the present century. The remaining portions could well undergo similar patterns of conversion within the first two or three decades of the next century.

This would mean the virtual end of the biomes that are ecologically more complex, biotically far richer, and scientifically less known, than any others on Earth. It would precipitate some ultimate shifts in the course of evolution. It would also entail the irreversible loss of many unique natural resources that offer multiple utilitarian benefits—inter alia through modern agriculture, medicine, and industry—to human society now and for ever.

Type
Main Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , Summer 1980 , pp. 101 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 1980

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