Cloud forests face destruction

[Dead_Parrot]

Many of the world’s rarest and richest forests – its high-altitude cloud forests – could be all-but obliterated by 2080 due to the combined impact of man-made climate change and habitat destruction.

Writing in the journal Nature Climate Change, an international scientific team has warned of the near-total loss of one of the world’s most delicate ecosystems, the Mexican cloud forest, along with 70 per cent of its plant and animal species, as a result of human pressures.

“Cloud forests occur only at certain high altitudes and their species are exceptionally vulnerable to the loss of the cool, moist environment that sustains them,” explains lead author Rocio Ponce-Reyes of Australia's ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions (CEED) and The University of Queensland.

“Habitat loss and degradation by human encroachment are the main threats to cloud forests around the world at the moment,” says Ms Ponce-Reyes.

More: http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20121903-23228.html
Paper (sub): http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1453.html