REAL problem deforestation and extinction of food chain

Five to nine percent of the Amazon's 40,000 known species of plants will be at risk of extinction by 2050 should current deforestation trends continue, report researchers writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Although the number of threatened species is less than estimated in some previous studies, we stress that ongoing and future land-use changes pose serious threats to Amazonian biodiversity. If the risk estimates from this study are applied to the 50,000 total vascular plant species (12,500 canopy trees) estimated to occur in the Amazon Basin, we predict that between 2,400 and 4,550 species (600–1,138 species of trees) will become committed to extinction over the next several decades because of land-use change alone," they write.

"This is an unacceptable loss rate and calls for strong and immediate conservation actions."

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Related: 80% of Amazon Deforestation Stems from Cattle Ranching