Educação pode mudar sua vida

By the end of this century, 42% of animal species in Southeast Asia could become extinct, says a new study published in Nature. Worse still, at least half of those species could disappear worldwide. Using Singapore as a microscosm for examining a regionwide tropical biodiversity crisis, Navjot Sodhi of the National University of Singapore and his colleagues compiled population data from the past two centuries to prove that as Singapore's forests have been sacrificed – for agriculture and urban development – animals that call the forest home have suffered enormously. In the past 80 years, two thirds of the 91 known forest-dependent species of birds in Singapore have become extinct. As deforestation has been the overwhelming contributor to species demise in Singapore, Sodhi and his team used the current deforestation rate – a staggering 74% loss over the past two centuries – for the entire region of the Southeast Asia, to predict that somewhere between 13% percent and 42% percent of species regionwide may be doomed. The future looks “bleak”, says Sodhi. What's needed are strong measures against illegal logging and poaching, or economic incentives to establish nature reserves. Unless those more rigorous efforts are undertaken, Asia may bid the likes of the banded leaf monkey and the leopard cat adieu.