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Amazon ... not calm Photo by Dominick DellaSala A flooded rain forest in the Amazon Basin is one of many sites visited by Dominick DellaSala during a recent trip to South America. He says the ecosystems in North and South America are directly linked because of migratory birds that winter there and summer here. The birds are losing habitat on both ends, he says. A world apart, the direct link between eco-systems remains in peril By PAUL FATTIG Dominick DellaSala will never again be able to watch a yellow-rumped warbler flitting across the back yard without his thoughts flying south. Far south. Even watching a black-headed grosbeak cracking seeds in a nearby bird feeder will cause him to daydream about a tropical clime. "A lot of the birds we see in our backyard feeders are really just taking up short-time residences in this temperate zone," explained the director of the Klamath-Siskiyou Regional Program for the World Wildlife Fund. "Most of the time, they are down in the tropics," he added. "They are only up here three months out of the year. Just a short time, really." DellaSala, who has a doctorate in forest ecology, spent most of April in South America, where he studied environmental issues impacting the tropical ecosystem in the Amazon Basin in Peru and in the temperate forests of southern Chile. He also met with other environmental activists. The neotropical migratory birds such as grosbeaks and warblers that summer here spend the winter thousands of miles away in South America, he noted. "There is a direct connection between our ecosystems - there is a direct link," he said. The two areas he visited are among what the WWF considers the world's top 200 important ecosystems, along with the temperate conifer forests in the Klamath-Siskiyou area of Southern Oregon, he noted. "A lot of neotropical migratory birds have been in a steady rate of decline because of deforestation in the tropics on their wintering grounds and the loss of intact forests back here in the temperate zone," he said. "They are getting it at both ends." In fact, the Brazilian government reported this week that timber harvests in the vast Amazon's rain forest are on the rise again after a year of relative stability. They pointed to an improved economy as the main factor. Some 7,935 square miles of rain forest were cut down by logging companies and farmers clearing land in the 12 months after August 1999, said Mary Allegretti, secretary for Amazon affairs for Brazil's Environmental Ministry. That was an increase of nearly 15 percent over the same period a year earlier, she said. Allegretti said the ministry was making headway in making it harder for land owners to cut down forest without prior authorization. The bureaucracy involved in implementing sustainable logging programs in the region also has been reduced, she added. In 1970, about 99 percent of the Amazon rain forest was still standing. That number has since dropped to about 85 percent of the 2 million-square-mile wilderness. That decrease in the Amazon rain forest represents a growing global "biodiversity" crisis, DellaSala said. "But the solution to this biodiversity crisis can't be on the shoulders of any one nation," he said. "We all have to work together to find ways to reduce the pressure on the ecosystems or we will lose some of the richest places on the planet." Using Iquitos, a city of some 400,000 people bordering the Amazon River, as his base of operations, DellaSala explored a portion of the Amazon Basin which contains about 20 percent of the globe's fresh water. "The tropical forests only represent 6 percent of the world's land mass but they have more than 60 percent of the world's terrestrial species," he said. "On my first day out, I counted more than 60 species of birds," he added. "It's phenomenally rich in bird diversity." After visiting Peru, DellaSala flew south to the southern reaches of Chile to explore the temperate rain forest known as the Valdivian ecoregion. "The Chilean temperate rain forest is almost a mirror image of the Pacific Northwest," he said. There are only seven temperate rain forests on the globe, including southeast Alaska, Chile, western British Columbia, the Pacific Northwest, coastal Australia, New Zealand and a small portion of western Europe. "And all those areas are shrinking from logging pressure," he said. Environmental activists from South America will tour the Klamath-Siskiyou region later this year, he said. "They are working on the same approaches down there as we are up here," he said. "We want to increase the size and variety of protected areas while integrating sustainable development practices." Environmental activists in South America feel no more welcome than their counterparts in North America, he observed. "I think that's the case for anybody doing this kind of work," he said. "Unfortunately, they are shooting the messengers. We should be figuring out ways to work together on this problem. "Conservationists don't want to see people out of work," he added. "Our goal is to find a way to live on this planet sustainably. That's the challenge whether you are here in the Klamath-Siskiyous or down in the tropics." Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or e-mail him at [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.