Revival hopes for Amazon forest

THE Amazon rainforest has been given fresh hope after a British scientist found that it is much more resilient than previously feared.

It constitutes more than half of the planet’s remaining rainforest, with its 2.4million square miles the most species-rich tract of land.

Storing about half of the global tropical forest carbon, large losses could make climate change worse.

Logging, combined with global warming, is leaving the Amazon much more likely to catch fire.

However, Bert Wuyts, a fourth-year PHD student at the University of Bristol, has found as long as there is some forest left, deforestation will not lock currently forested areas into a savannah state. This means recovery of the forest should happen as soon as these areas are left alone by humans.

Destruction of the Amazon began in the Sixties, with farmers slashing and burning forests to make way for crops.