Threats
Threats to the forests of New Guinea are numerous. In its current form, commercial logging has devastated many areas of New Guinea by clearing forests, altering ecological processes, and threatening both biological diversity and people's livelihoods. Although logging is by far the largest threat to the long-term ecological integrity of the forests of New Guinea, other large-scale, multinational extractive industries - especially minerals mining - also affect forests and are particularly harmful to aquatic ecosystems such as rivers, lakes, estuaries, coastal mangrove forests, coral reefs, and sea grass beds.
Slash-and-burn agriculture often follows in the footsteps of loggers and completely alters whatever remnant forests the loggers have left behind. In many cases, hunters use roads cleared by loggers to search for birds of paradise, cassowaries, and marsupials to trade in local and international markets.
Finally, as local people come into more frequent contact with the cash economy and other outside influences, their contact with the natural world and their traditional subsistence lifestyles diminishes and they become more inclined to cede natural resources to large-scale developers. In many cases, this development threatens both the environment and the livelihoods of local people over the long term.
|
