Forest conservation: Remember Gran Chaco

KUEMMERLE TOBIAS; ALTRICHTER MARIANA; BALDI GERMÁN; CABIDO MARCEL; CAMINO MICAELA; CUELLAR ERIKA; DECARRE JULIETA; CUELLAR ROSA LENY; SANDRA DÍAZ; GASPARRI IGNACION; GAVIER-PIZARRO GREGORIO; GUINZBURG RUBÉN; GIORDANO ANTHONY; GRAU RICARDO; JOBBÁGY ESTEBAN; LEYNAUD GERARDO; MACCHI LEANDRO; MASTRANGELO MATÍAS; MATTEUCCI SILVIA DIANA; NOSS ANDREW; PARUELO JOSE; PIQUER-RODRÍGUEZ MARÍA; ROMERO-MUÑOZ ALFREDO; SEMPER-PASCUAL ASUNCIÓN; THOMPSON JEFFREY; TORRELLA SEBASTIÁN; TORRES RICARDO; ´VOLANTE JOSE; YANOSKY ALBERTO; ZAK MARCELO

SCIENCE

AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE

Año: 2017 vol. 355 p. 465 - 465

0036-8075

Tropical dry forests around the globe are in dire need of protection, as many of these ecoregions experience rapid land-use change and biodiversity loss. A comprehensive analysis of plant assemblages from neotropical dry forests, recently published in Science, highlights the often underappreciated, yet exceptional floristic richness and uniqueness that these forests have, and provides compelling arguments for ramping up conservation efforts.While we applaud the DRYFLOR team for their seminal work, we are also concerned about the authors? decision to exclude the Gran Chaco, often considered the world?s largest continuous tropical dry forest ecosystem. The Gran Chaco covers more than 1,100,000 km2 and extends into Northern Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil. The DRYFLOR team used a restrictive definition of dry forest that excludes the Chaco because of temperate elements in the Chaco?s flora and because the Gran Chaco may experience freezing temperatures although that applies only to parts of the Gran Chaco, as well as to other neotropical dry forest regions that were included.The Gran Chaco is highly biodiverse, with high levels of endemism both regarding its floristic and faunal assemblages. This region is also a global deforestation hotspot due to the ongoing rapid expansion of cattle ranching and soybean cultivation there recently. The Gran Chaco?s protected area network is precariously sparse, with only 9% currently protected, and the pressure to convert further natural ecosystems to agricultural land will stay high. Together, this makes the Gran Chaco one of the most threatened ecoregions worldwide. Although concurrent definitions of what dry forest are exist, the Gran Chaco should not be neglected when bringing attention to the urgent conservation needs in the often forgotten neotropical dry forests.