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       Brazil's Coastal Rainforest Suffers Widespread Species Extinction

   by Rosanne Skirble

   The Atlantic forest in Brazil, once a part of the great Amazon basin on
   the South American continent, is suffering from widespread species loss
   according to a new study.
   Ecologist [1]Carlos Peres with England's University of East Anglia and
   then University of Cambridge graduate student [2]Gustavo Canale
   traveled through the region between 2003 and 2005.  They documented 200
   of the largest and least disturbed old-growth forest fragments in the
   vast region of the [3]Atlantic forest.
   On average, they found only four of the 18 mammal species they were
   looking for. Canale, now working in Brazil at the State University of
   Mato Grosso, says he and Peres drew largely on information from
   wildlife surveys, camera traps, and interviews with local people.
   The scientists were surprised that even in what looked like healthy
   forest cover, the larger mammals were absent.  "The situation was worse
   than we thought," Canale says.   "All the charismatic species," Peres
   says, "the large primates, the large ungulates, brocket deer, tapirs,
   giant anteaters, jaguars, the large cats, all of those things are
   pretty much gone from even fragments that look on the surface of it,
   okay, in terms of forest cover."
   Hunting is the main driver of species loss on lands fragmented by
   deforestation. Peres says Brazilian law protects forest cover, but not
   wildlife in the remnant forest patches. Unless that law is changed, he
   says, the losses will continue. "Essentially what we are calling for is
   a wholesale revision of the Brazilian legislative code that protects
   wildlife within these remnant  forest patches. Because these remnant
   forest patches are essentially going out of business, if you like, in
   terms of the wildlife."
   In good news in comparison, five areas that did have laws to protect
   wildlife and where the laws were strictly enforced, Peres says the
   mammals did much better.  "In those five sites we find the highest
   degree of retention of those wildlife communities. So the protected
   areas are actually working in this region, the problem is that there
   are very few of them."
   The researchers want to see more such areas established, as well as the
   creation of wildlife corridors that would link isolated forest patches
   and keep animals away from hunters and other hazards. But Peres also
   offers a cautionary message.  He says the fragmented tropical forest
   isn't just a problem in the Atlantic forest of eastern Brazil.  "But I
   would argue that this is also happening throughout most of the world's
   heavily fragmented bio-diversity forest hotspots, where overhunting is
   also widespread."
   "Holding on to the last remaining large tracts of primary forests,"
   Carlos Peres says, will be a crucial part of the conservation mission
   of this century.  His and Gustavo Canale's study on Brazil's Atlantic
   forest is published in this week's edition of the journal [4]PloS ONE.
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   [5]http://www.voanews.com/content/brazils-coastal-rainforest-suffers-wi
   despread-species-extenction/1486270.html

References

   1. http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/people/peresca/perescarlos.htm
   2. http://www.university-directory.eu/Brazil/Mato-Grosso-State-University.html#.UCpm6crNkb0
   3. http://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/regions/southamerica/brazil/placesweprotect/atlantic-forest.xml
   4. http://dx.plos.org/10.13721/journal.pone.0041671
   5. http://www.voanews.com/content/brazils-coastal-rainforest-suffers-widespread-species-extenction/1486270.html