A hunch-backed, chisel-toothed rodent weighing in at a measly 13 pounds is in a committed, mutual relationship with towering Brazil nut trees populating the Amazon rainforests. Both are dependent on the existence of each other. Both are in danger.
Similarly, so are we.
Within the past decade, 8.4 million football-field-sized areas of rainforest have been cleared for timber and agricultural use. The removal of forests, or deforestation, does not only impact the trees removed, but affects the predicted 30% of all known species living within the rainforest; unlike trees, there is no way to replant the numerous endangered species required for them to thrive.
According to a Global Assessment Report issued by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in 2019, around one million species “already face extinction, many within decades, unless action is taken to reduce the intensity of drivers of biodiversity loss.”
Biodiversity, or all of the different kinds of species on the planet, has an impact on the world as large as the vastness of its definition. The report claims that one of these “unprecedented” disturbances on ecosystems has been human changes in land use, like deforestation.
“A forest is not a forest without its biodiversity,” says Justin Catanoso, a professor at Wake Forest University and journalist for Mongabay News.
Rainforest trees like the Brazil nut, for example, act as nature’s contribution to absorbing detrimental (and increasing) amounts of carbon dioxide in the air, attempting to mitigate the carbon emitted by human production, deforestation, and wildfires. However, in order for them to thrive, biodiversity, down to the pollinators and seed dispersers, must be maintained.
Take the sharp-toothed agouti for instance. As one of the only known creatures able to break the sturdy Brazil nut pod, they provide an essential step for reproduction; with every meal, these creatures hide remaining nuts, acting as seed dispersers so that the Brazil nut may continue to populate the rainforest.
According to writers at Mongabay, the tree and agouti are in an interdependent relationship that requires one another’s assistance in order to survive. “For this reason, there has been little success growing Brazil nut trees in plantations—they only appear to grow in primary rainforest,” says Mongabay.
Immediate action towards saving biodiversity is crucial, according to Catanoso. A decrease within the rainforests has and will continue to diminish the effectiveness of other ecosystem services provided by nature, including the production of food and water, regulation of weather, and carbon sequestration, or the storing of carbon dioxide.
“The UN [United Nations] says we have 10 years to dramatically reduce our carbon emissions to head off the most catastrophic impacts of climate change, and one of the ways we will get there is by keeping our forests in tact, by reducing deforestation, and by making sure those forests are thriving in biodiversity,” says Catanoso.
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https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/species/brazil-nut-tree
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/326/5954/806
https://www.pnas.org/content/114/23/5775#ref-8
https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation-and-forest-degradation
https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/05/1037941
https://www.statslife.org.uk/news/4398-rss-announces-statistics-of-the-decade
https://www.mpg.de/biodiversity
Click to access 12610.full.pdf
https://www.bbc.com/news/10105273
https://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/rainforest_ecology.html
https://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/amazon_wildlife.html
Science Journalism- Abby Vogeley 