
The range rests on whether cutting down the region’s forest continues at the rate of the late 20th and early 21st centuries or slows down to lesser levels proposed in 2006, study authors said. If deforestation continues at the same pace, nearly 8,700 tree types are in trouble, but the number of species at risk could be as low as 5,500 if nations are able to cut back as planned, said study co-author Nigel Pitman from the Field Museum in Chicago.
“We’ve never had a good idea of how many species are threatened in the Amazon,” Pitman said Friday. “Now with this study, we have an estimate.”
About 15 years ago, the Amazon was losing about 11,600 square miles of forest a year, said Tim Killeen, a scientist from Agteca Amazonica in Bolivia. But that figure has dropped to about 3,800 square miles a year, he said. Killeen said the tree that produces Brazil nuts is seriously under threat, while “mahogany is commercially extinct throughout the Amazon.” He said that means there’s no more industry harvesting the wood, but some trees exist.