How Environmental and Societal Changes Affect Wildlife in the Tropics

Abstract

The tropics are affected by a growing range of developments, which replicate what has been happening in developed nations over centuries within decades, even years at times, and at much larger scales. There are also newly emerging threats such as GM, mining and explorations at gigantic scales, mega-hydrodevelopment, and a host of new chemicals, some of them, like neonicotinoids, with systemic, long-term, and unknown impacts. An unprecedented assault takes place on ecosystems and their species through intensifying land uses to feed a growing human population, which consumes more and more per capita. “Super crops” such as oil palm and soy bean, increasingly genetically modified, to provide fuel, food, and fiber, replace natural forests and ecosystems at great and growing scales resulting in shrinking wildlife habitats and populations. And now, the threat of a changing climate has been added to all that.