Research

Have Indo-Malaysian rainforests reached the end of the road

  • date:2018-05-14
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Southeast Asia, last refuge of charismatic species such as the Orangutan, Sumatran Rhino and a suite of other unique species now faces unparalleled threats to its remaining forests and biodiversity.

Parts of this region, but especially Indonesia and Malaysia have become the world’s greatest suppliers of Palm oil, with the two countries supplying 83% of global palm oil demand, and increases in this demand have led to a halving of forest coverage in large parts of the region between 2001-2014. Across the region annual forest loss is increasing, almost doubling in Papua New Guinea, and increasing by over ten-fold in the Solomon Islands over the same time period.
The expansion of infrastructure has been so rapid that up to 99% of roads in parts of the region are not included in global road maps, meaning remaining forests are more fragmented and smaller than most estimates. As a result almost half the region is within just 2.5km of a road, and regions such as Sabah have 99.94% of all deforestation within 2.5km of a road, and upto around 90% of all deforestation occurs in this distance of a road.
All forms of exploitation are greater close to roads, and when all roads are mapped the average distance to a road drops to under one tenth of that using the global road maps for almost half of the region, making them vulnerable to hunting and all other forms of exploitation.
Industrial-scale palm oil production is also spreading across the region, for example 39% of all large clearances between 2001-2014 in Halmahera were from industrial housing complex construction, and in 2015 deforestation rates increased by 252.5%, marking the probable start of industrial-scale palm-oil production and expansion. This is a worrying symptom for many islands across the region, which with as little as 2% of their land area protected have no defense against clearance, despite often having species unique to a single island alone.
The continued expansion of road networks and plantations will inevitably have devastating consequences for biodiversity across the region. Islands like Java highlight the possible future for much of the region, with its only remaining forest either protected or inaccessible; but the loss of species if this future is realized is incalculable give the limited knowledge and high levels of endemism in much of the region.
Urgent action is needed to protect key areas, to stem the rate of loss of high biodiversity value forests and the to expand Indonesia’s moratorium to include high diversity rather than just primary forest.
Actions, such as those taken by Europe to reduce the import of palm oil may be the only mechanism to enforce effective sustainability standards into the Palm oil industry, and stem the increasing rates of deforestation and road construction. A failure to act effectively will inevitably cause significant extinctions across one of the most diverse and unique parts of our planet.

Read the full article here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320717320426

文章新闻--Biological Conservation.jpg

Grids of roads across the study area. Blue lines indicate roads

mapped by OSM whereas red lines  indicates roads mapped in this study