Global Crisis as Rainforest Loss Soars

Amazon rainforest loss increased some six percent in 2004 to near record levels - as rancher, soybean farmers and loggers burned and cut down a near-record area of 10,088 square miles of ancient rainforest ecosystems. Rainforest deforestation and diminishment is spiraling out of control wherever the World's last ecologically and evolutionary rich rainforests are found - and particularly in the world's last large rainforest wildernesses found in Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo and Paupua New Guinea.

New thinking is desperately needed on rainforest conservation. It is becoming abundantly clear that the forces of destruction marshaled against rainforests - loggers, agriculturalists, oil and mining - will not defeated through status quo policy responses. The World Bank funds soya production, and along with WWF sponsors efforts to reform commercial logging. These approaches have failed and made rainforest loss worse - largely because they have not understood that empowering indigenous peoples is the best way to meaningfully ensure rainforests are sustained.

Read more in Forest Conservation Blog by Dr. Glen Barry

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