The Vanishing Tropical Forests 



By Louis 0. Williams 

 Chief Curator, Botany 



■4^ 





Twenty years ago, when this photo was taken at Hoya Grande in Honduras, the forest on the mountaintops in the background was untouched and 

 the pine forest (foreground) relatively unspoiled. Today, with the population in Central American countries increased by more than 50 per cent 

 since then and growing by three per cent each year, much of the forest cover has been removed to open the land for agriculture and grazing, as 

 in the center of the photo. Lack of conservation practices is leading to rapid destruction of the forests and ultimate damage to the soil through 



erosion, overgrazing, primitive agricultural practices, and neglect. 



The tropical world holds a fascination for most people, 

 though there are perhaps more popular misconceptions 

 about the tropics than any other region. Strictly speaking, 

 the tropics is that part of the world extending 23 3^ degrees 

 north of the equator to the Tropic of Cancer and an equal 

 distance south of the equator to the Tropic of Capricorn. 

 A quick look at a map or atlas will show that there are 

 some tropical lands on all continents except Antarctica 

 and that two of the continents. Soiuh .America and Africa, 

 have more than one-half of their land area located within 

 the tropics. 



The largest tropical rain forest area, and perhaps the 

 least disturbed one in the world, occurs in the Amazon 

 basin. This region extends from Belem do Para on the 

 mouth of the Amazon River west and southwest across 

 the continent to the foothills of the Andes, northwest to 

 the table moimtains of the "Lost World," and south to 

 southern Peru. (An Amazonian estuary is shown in a 

 diorama in Hall 26). 



The great continent of Africa is largely within the trop- 

 ics. The rain forests of the Congo basin are enormous 

 in extent but not nearly so impressive as are those of the 

 Amazon basin. Within the African tropics are great areas 

 of desert; the Sahara at the north and the Kalahari toward 



the south. The Namib desert along the coast of South 

 West Africa, due to the cold Bengala Current offshore, 

 is one of the least "tropical" places within the tropics. 

 In this desert grow some of the most curious plants to be 

 found anywhere. IVelwitschia is one of those, shown in a 

 diorama in the Museiun's Hall 26. 



The Eurasian continent has a relatively small portion 

 of its area in the tropics, including parts of Saudi Arabia, 

 India and southeast .Asia. The tropical forests of south- 

 east Asia were, and perhaps still are, some of the richest 

 in the world. However, the terrific population pressure 

 in that region seems to indicate that most forests will be 

 gone there within the century. Europe, if considered a 

 continent separate from Asia, is wholly oiuside the tropics. 



Australia is seldom thought of as tropical even though 

 nearly half of that great island falls within the tropics. On 

 the other hand, Oceania, no continent but a name applied 

 to that great mass of islands in the Pacific, is in man>' 

 people's thinking a tropical paradise. 



To those of us who live in the Midwest the easily acces- 

 sible regions of the tropics are those almost straight soiuh 

 of us in Mexico and Central .America. The exuberance 

 of the vegetation in these tropics attracts and often over- 

 whelms the visitor or even the botanist whose experience 



Page 4 JULY 



