Across the planet, big trees are in trouble

We all know that big animals such as elephants, rhinos and tigers are in trouble, but it turns out that the fate of our largest and oldest trees is just as dire.

Everywhere you look, big trees are hurting (photo by William Laurance)

All across the world, big trees are suffering.  They are being cleared for agriculture, felled by loggers, and are dying as a result of habitat fragmentation, exotic pests and pathogens, altered fire regimes, and severe droughts. 

Big trees are adapted for longevity and stability--two things in short supply in our rapidly changing world.

I first wrote about the dire fate of big trees in early 2012, in New Scientist.  That was followed by papers in Science in 2012 and Conservation Letters in 2013, in collaboration with leading ecologists David Lindenmayer and Jerry Franklin. 

Now there's more evidence of the vulnerability of big trees, from the Amazon.  Plinio Sist and colleagues have just found that many big trees are being damaged during selective logging operations there, and die soon afterward.  This is on top of the big trees that are actually being harvested.  The post-logging wave of tree death has a serious impact on the carbon storage and ecology of the forest.

It's increasing looking like big trees are an important barometer of Earth's environmental 'health'.

-Bill Laurance