In a word, yes. A marine ecologist in New Zealand
has won a top award by showing how deforestation has affected
marine ecosystems such as cutting down of the once intact rainforest in the country's South Island. As this latest research shows, not
only do forests regulate
the climate but also provide for plant and animal species in the water as well as on land.
Publication date: July 2000
Summary
We today are delivering our message to you at your G8 Summit in Okinawa, Japan for our concern to preserve what is remaining of the world's ancient forests. As we are not able to presently relay this message by other means than a direct approach to you we wish to stress the urgent need for meaningful and concrete domestic and international measures to combat illegal logging and the trade in illegally harvested timber...
Publication date: April 2001
Summary
A short, chronological history of Greenpeace's Canadian Rainforest Campaign; 1991-2001.
The first steps
Publication date: April 2001
Summary
Greenpeace celebrates the first significant steps in ensuring the future protection of Canada's Great Bear Rainforest on British Columbia's central and north coasts.
This region of one-thousand year old cedar trees, towering ancient spruce, grizzly, black and rare white "Spirit" bears, wild salmon, eagles, wolves and enormous biological diversity is globally rare and truly an international treasure worthy of protection.
These first steps by the forest industry and politicians toward ensuring a healthy future for the rainforest follow an intensive global campaign by Greenpeace to build a consensus of opposition among international buyers of forest products to the irresponsible destruction of B.C.'s last intact rainforests.
Ancient forest
Ancient forests are the living expression of billions of years of evolution. Home to millions of types of plants and animals, these forests sustain as much as 90% of the world's land-based species - everything from owls to orchids and bears to beetles.
Publication date: June 2000
Summary
The Amazon rainforest is one of the biologically richest areas in the world containing more than one-third of the world's remaining ancient forests and supporting up to 50% of the planet's land-based animal and plant species. The Amazon contains more than 2.5 million species of insects, more than 300 species of mammals, 2000 species of fish and more than 60,000 species of plants.
Nearly 80% of world's ancient forests have been destroyed or degraded. The remainder is disappearing at the rate of 10 million hectares every year an area the size of a football pitch every two seconds. In the Amazon an area the size of France has already been destroyed (about 1/7 th of the total) and an area half the size of Belgium disappears annually.
Publication date: May 2000
Summary
Ancient forests are among the greatest living expressions of three billion years of evolution of life on earth. They contain as much as 90 per cent of the world's land-based species, literally millions of types of flora and fauna from owls to orchids, bears and beetles. Many of these species will not survive unless we protect large areas of the remaining ancient forests. Biologists generally agree that the rate of species extinction is now 100 to 1000 times as great as it was before the coming of humanity. Palaeontologists recognise six previous mass-extinction events during the past half-billion years. The last and most famous occurred 65 million years ago and ended the age of dinosaurs. Researchers of biodiversity agree that we are in the midst of the seventh mass extinction. Even if the current rate of habitat destruction were to continue in forest and coral reefs alone, half of the plant and animal species would be gone by the end of the 21st century.
