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WASHINGTON, DC, March 4, 1997 -- The first scientific assessment of the world's large, intact natural forests -- what the World Resources Institute calls "frontier forests" -- reveals that it's not just tropical forests that are in trouble. The world's most endangered frontier forests are in the temperate zone which includes the United States and Europe.

Last Frontier Forests: Ecosystems and Economies on the Edge, a new World Resources Institute study and global mapping project, graphically depicts the extent of human impacts on global forests. This is the first time that historic forest loss over the past 8,000 years has been documented. The study and state of the art Geographic Information System (GIS) maps spotlight Earth's "frontier forests" -- the last major tracts of undisturbed forests large enough to provide a safe haven for all their indigenous species and likely to survive indefinitely without human intervention and forest management if key decisions are made now to allow that to happen.

Consider these startling findings:

• Only one-fifth of the world's original forests still qualify as frontier forest.

• Three countries -- Russia, Canada, and Brazil -- house more than 70 percent of the world's remaining frontier forest, and half of this forest lies in the far north where resource-extraction costs are high.

• Outside of the largely inhospitable northern boreal forests, 75 percent of the remaining frontier forest is threatened, and may well be significantly degraded in the next 5 to 10 years.

• Logging, including that by multinational corporations, is the most serious threat to the remaining large tracts of frontier forest. Agriculture and land clearing endanger 20 percent of threatened frontier forests.

• The most threatened acreage includes all of Europe's frontier forests, 87 percent of those in Central America, and three-quarters of the pristine stands in Africa and Oceania (Australia, New Zealand, and Papua-New Guinea).

The WRI analysis, which draws on the expertise of 90 of the world's top forest specialists, is the opening salvo of a new five-year Forest Frontiers Initiative to promote stewardship in and around the world's last major forest frontiers. The multi-year WRI effort will target government and private decision-makers responsible for deciding the fate of the last intact frontier forests in Canada and Russia, Northern Amazonia and the Guyana Shield area of South America, and Africa's Congo Basin.

WRI senior associate Nigel Sizer, a forest policy expert with extensive experience working in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa, said: "With the right information, action can be taken by policy-makers, private-sector loggers, forest product manufacturers, and consumers to manage all the world's forests responsibly and meet everyone's needs." He called for new and balanced management strategies, tailored to each region, that protect forests' biodiversity and other assets while also providing raw materials and ecosystem services.

The Frontier Forest Index

WRI developed a Frontier Forest Index to rank nations according to the percentage of the frontier forest they have lost and the proportion of remaining frontier forest that is highly threatened.

All of North Africa and the Middle East and nearly all countries in Europe -- 76 nations in all -- have lost it all. Another 11 nations are classified as on the edge, with only 5 percent or less of their frontier forest surviving and all of it threatened. In 28 countries, time to protect remaining frontiers is running out, while eight countries have great opportunities to sustain large areas of frontier forest if they follow stewardship principles. In the continental forty-eight United States, frontiers account for about 1 percent of original forest cover, primarily contained in three combined park and wilderness areas in the northern Rockies and one block in the North Cascades of Washington state. All legally protected, they are nonetheless threatened because they are too isolated to support their traditional populations of some large mammal species over time.

"The critical point is that the countries whose forests are in good condition -- Canada, Russia, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana -- offer a tremendous opportunity for responsible forest management," Sizer emphasized. "With a turnaround in policy, these countries have a real chance to keep most of their original frontier forests."

Threats to frontier forests

Logging turned out to be the predominate threat in all six regions assessed, affecting more than 70 percent of the threatened frontiers. Recent years have seen logging's impacts intensified as private foreign investors look to such forest-rich countries as Brazil, Suriname, Guyana, Bolivia, Gabon, Cameroon, Cambodia, and Burma to satisfy demands for timber. Profits from large-scale logging often subsidize road-building, which opens forests to fuelwood gathering and clearing for agriculture. Energy development with its attendant dams, pollution, and new infrastructure also brings new roads and settlements, affecting close to 40 percent of frontiers under moderate or high threat.

Clearing for agriculture, affecting one-fifth of threatened forest frontiers, is worst in Asia, Central and South America. This danger can only grow as population increases, and it is much worse in fragmented secondary-growth forest areas. Removing too much vegetation -- whether through overgrazing or over-collecting firewood and building materials -- can denude an ecosystem, causing erosion and clogging of waterways.

Commercial hunting in forests can upset natural processes that shape forests, for example, by altering the ways that seeds are distributed and herbivores kept in check. A third of Africa's threatened forest frontier is at risk because of runaway poaching to meet urban demand for bush-meat. Other threats include suppression of natural fires, pollution from faraway sources, introduced animal species that have no local predators, and replacement of natural forest by tree plantations.

Behind these threats, however, is a network of root causes of deforestation that include:

• Growing economies with growing demand for paper and wood products;

• Population growth, poverty, and landlessness that drive the poor to clear pristine forest;

• Mistaken economic policies that ignore or undervalue frontier forest preservation;

• Short-sighted political decision-making that appeases special interest groups or influential families or that defuses acute political emergencies by offering land, access, roads, etc.

• Corruption among government officials or illegal trade in drugs produced from plantsgrown in isolated growing areas.

Why Save Frontier Forests?

The WRI report cites six critical reasons:

• Frontier forests are home to many of the world's last indigenous cultures; about 50 million traditional people depend on tropical forests alone for their livelihood.

• They are refuges for global biodiversity. For example, between 65-75 percent of all plant species found within high-biodiversity countries like Brazil, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea are estimated to be found within the frontier forests of those countries.

• They maintain complex biological communities and ecosystem processes and provide both unique habitats and baseline information on how natural forests work.

• They store tremendous amounts of carbon dioxide -- at least 433 billion metric tons -- that might otherwise become greenhouse gases; they help maintain regional water cycles, the global climate, and soil integrity.

• They have the potential to contribute to long-term economic growth through careful stewardship.

• They provide opportunities for recreation and ecotourism that can be economic resources for nearby populations as well as spiritual and aesthetic resources for others.

What Needs to be Done?

The WRI report recommends policy changes to promote economic development without destroying forest resources and environmental services. It offers models of stewardship involving protected areas or combinations of sustainable forest use practices and forest preserves. It also calls on national and international donors, business, and the private sector, private citizens and frontier peoples, and nongovernmental organizations and advocacy groups to take responsible actions.

Last Frontier Forests: Ecosystems and Economies on the Edge was written by WRI Associate Dirk Bryant, WRI GIS Analyst Daniel Nielsen and consultant Laura Tangley. Data collaborators include the World Conservation Monitoring Centre, the World Wildlife Fund, and more than 90 top forest experts from around the world.

The World Resources Institute is a Washington, DC-based center for policy research that provides objective information and practical proposals for policy change that will foster environmentally sound development. WRI works with institutions in more than 50 countries to bring the insights of scientific research, economic analysis, and practical experience to political, business, and non-governmental organization leaders around the world.

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Last Frontier Forests on the Internet

Last Frontier Forests: Ecosystems and Economies on the Edge is being released at a National Press Club "Morning Newsmaker" news conference at 9:00 am (EST) Tuesday, March 4, 1997. The news conference will be broadcast live on the Internet via RealAudio on WebActive. The news conference and the study can be accessed through the World Resources Institute's website at "http://www.wri.org/wri/ffi/."

For more information, contact:

World Resources Institute
Paul Mackie, senior media officer, +1(202)729-7684, pmackie@wri.org