When forest is lost, so is much of its biodiversity. More than half the world's terrestrial species grow in forests.
Forests are the great storehouses of natural life.
Deforestation was most severe in Europe and North America, but in recent decades the rate of deforestation in Latin America, Africa and Asia-Pacific has massively increased. Effectively addressing the threats to forests will require a combination of significant increases in protected areas, where logging and other major resource extraction is strictly off limits, and a fundamental shift in how timber markets operate. WWF is campaigning to ensure that an ecologically representative network of protected areas, covering a minimum of 10 per cent of the world's forests is established by the year 2000, demonstrating a range of ecologically and socially appropriate models. Introduction To Preserve Forest Ecosystems Working to preserve and protect the natural functioning of forest ecosystems. The unprecedented rate of forest degradation, deforestation and fragmentation taking place all around the world since the beginning of the twentieth century, along with the consequent loss of forest biological diversity, have placed the issue forest of forest biological diversity high on the international.