Forest conservation: Remember Gran Chaco

KUEMMERLE, TOBIAS; ALTRICHTER, MARIANA; BALDI, GERMÁN; CABIDO, MARCEL; CAMINO, MICAELA; CUELLAR, ROSA LENY; DECARRE, JULIETA; DÍAZ, SANDRA; GASPARRI, IGNACIO; GAVIER-PIZARRO, GREGORIO; GINZBURG, RUBÉN; GIORDANO, ANTHONY J.; GRAU, H. RICARDO; JOBBÁGY, ESTEBAN; LEYNAUD, GERARDO; MACCHI, LEANDRO; MASTRANGELO, MATIAS; MATTEUCCI, SILVIA D.; NOSS, ANDREW; PARUELO, JOSÉ; PIQUER-RODRÍGUEZ, MARIA; ROMERO-MUÑOZ, ALFREDO; SEMPER-PASCUAL, ASUNCIÓN; THOMPSON, JEFFREY; TORRELLA, SEBASTIÁN; TORRES, RICARDO; VOLANTE, JOSÉ N.; YANOSKY, ALBERTO; ZAK, MARCELO

SCIENCE

AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE

Año: 2017 vol. 355

0036-8075

Comentario a un articulo - TROPICAL AND SUBTROPICAL dry forestsaround the globe are experiencing rapidclearing and concomitant biodiversityloss (1). In their Research Article ?Plantdiversity patterns in neotropical dry forestsand their conservation implications? (23September 2016, p. 1383), DRYFLOR et al.highlight the often underappreciated, yetexceptional floristic richness and uniqueness of these forests, and they providecompelling arguments for ramping upefforts to protect them.We applaud the DRYFLOR team for theirseminal work, but we are also concernedabout the exclusion of the Gran Chaco,frequently considered the world?s largestcontinuous tropical dry forest region (2?4).The Gran Chaco covers more than 1,100,000km2 in Northern Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil,and Paraguay. The DRYFLOR team useda restrictive definition of dry forest thatexcludes the Gran Chaco because of sometemperate elements in the Chaco?s floraand occasional freezing temperatures there.However, that applies only to parts of theGran Chaco, and other neotropical dryforests that were included in the analysisalso experience such temperatures (5).