New Jungles Prompt a Debate on Rain Forests

[n2doc]

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: January 29, 2009
CHILIBRE, Panama — The land where Marta Ortega de Wing raised hundreds of pigs until 10 years ago is being overtaken by galloping jungle — palms, lizards and ants.



Instead of farming, she now shops at the supermarket and her grown children and grandchildren live in places like Panama City and New York.

Here, and in other tropical countries around the world, small holdings like Ms. Ortega de Wing’s — and much larger swaths of farmland — are reverting to nature, as people abandon their land and move to the cities in search of better livings.

These new “secondary” forests are emerging in Latin America, Asia and other tropical regions at such a fast pace that the trend has set off a serious debate about whether saving primeval rain forest — an iconic environmental cause — may be less urgent than once thought. By one estimate, for every acre of rain forest cut down each year, more than 50 acres of new forest are growing in the tropics on land that was once farmed, logged or ravaged by natural disaster.

“There is far more forest here than there was 30 years ago,” said Ms. Ortega de Wing, 64, who remembers fields of mango trees and banana plants.

The new forests, the scientists argue, could blunt the effects of rain forest destruction by absorbing carbon dioxide, the leading heat-trapping gas linked to global warming, one crucial role that rain forests play. They could also, to a lesser extent, provide habitat for endangered species.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/30/science/earth/30forest.html

[RC]

1. How much different is this 'new growth' than the original rain forests?

Nothing natural ever comes back the same after it is destroyed.

[Thor_MN]

2. It will be more natural than farmland

It doesn't come back the same, but eventually, it becomes old growth. It may get colonized by entirely different species while reverting to forest, but sooner or later, what will be there will be dictated by the climate and be as close to what was originally there as can be expected. If the original conversion to farmland caused any extinctions, that stuff obviously will not be back. But it will fill in from around the edges.

New forests from abandoned farm land is good, saving untouched jungle is better, I don't see why we can not do both.

[TZ]

7. Not necessarily.

Look at areas that recover after volcanic activity or forrest fires. Heck even areas contaminated by radioactive waste can come back in some pretty good fashion. Nature is a bit more resilient than most people think.

[gtar100]

3. Good news, but I hope it isn't used to justify clear-cutting old-growth forests.

Isn't the important statistic the overall land-loss in regards to conservation?

[Richard D]

4. It's BS

Some cut jungle will grow back. But most tropical jungle is in the Amazon Basin. There the soil quality is so poor that once the jungle is slashed and burned and turned into cattle feed, it only takes a few years before all the nutrients are gone and all that is left is sand. Topsoil for most of the Amazon is only a few inches deep.

[Kip Humphrey]

5. Maybe we could ask the Maya.

[Mendocino]

6. Many tropical soils are laterite.

After just a few seasons of being farmed or grazed and the organics are gone, laterite (iron rich) soils can bake to brick-hard in the hot tropical sun. Virtually nothing will grow there again.