Patrick Moore

The Rainforest Action Network, an eco-political group based in San Francisco, recently published on their Web page that "the International Botanical Society recently released the results of an extensive study showing that, at current rates, two-thirds of the world's plant and animal species will become extinct by the year 2100." The International Botanical Society is nowhere to be found on the Internet.

More seriously, in March 1996, the World Wildlife Fund held a media conference in Geneva during the first meeting of the UN Panel on Forests. They stated that there are now 50,000 species going extinct every year due to human activity, more than at any time since the dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago. Most significantly, WWF stated that the main cause of these extinctions is "commercial logging". This was largely due, according to WWF director-general Claude Martin, to "massive deforestation in industrialized countries." The statements made at the media conference were broadcast and printed around the world, giving millions of people the impression that forestry was the main cause of species extinction.

I have tried to determine the basis for this allegation, openly challenging the WWF to provide details of species extinctions caused by logging. To date it would appear that there is no scientific evidence on which to base such a claim. WWF has provided no list of species that have become extinct due to logging. In particular, the claim of "massive deforestation" in industrialized countries runs counter to information provided by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. According to the FAO, the area of forest in the industrialized world is actually growing by about 0.2% per year, due to the reforestation of land that was previously cleared for farming.