New analysis of satellite data shows that much of the world's old-growth forests remain threatened, despite the forest protection laws passed by many countries in recent years.

Vast areas of remaining intact forest on four continents have been degraded because of poor enforcement of existing forest protection laws, according to researchers at the Washington-based World Resources Institute (WRI).

As scientists at the WRI's Global Forest Watch project examined data on what they thought were still vast, untouched stretches of intact forests worldwide, they concluded that such forest cover no longer existed, said Dirk Bryant, founder and co-director of the project.

"We are rapidly moving towards a world where wilderness forests are confined primarily to islands of parks and reserves, with surrounding areas managed commercially for timber and other resources," he said.

The two-year-old project seeks to provide precise information on forest loss by combining digital and satellite data with knowledge from organisations and researchers based in eight countries.

Forests fragmented

When WRI researchers wrote their first assessment of the world's primary forests four years ago, they found that only one-fifth of historic forest cover remained as large intact tracts. But the new data indicates that 40 percent of that cover will be lost in 10 to 20 years if the current rate of forest destruction continues.

"Much of the green canopy that is left is, in reality, already crisscrossed by roads, mining and logging concessions," said WRI president Jonathan Lash.

Indonesia has one of the highest rates of tropical forest loss in the world, said the WRI report released last Wednesday, and deforestation there appears to have increased to an average of two million hectares per year in the past decade, up from one million hectares annually in the 1980s.

Lowland tropical forests, the richest in timber resources and biodiversity, are most threatened. "They have been almost entirely cleared in Sulawesi and are predicted to disappear in Sumatra by 2005 and Kalimantan by 2010 if current trends continue," the report said.

Roads, other access routes and agricultural developments like plantations, have fragmented nearly one half of the archipelago's forests, the report continued. The demand for wood fibre has now exceeded legal supplies because of massive expansion in the plywood, pulp and paper production sectors during the past two decades.

"Illegal logging has reached epidemic proportions as a result of Indonesia's chronic structural imbalance between legal wood supply and demand."

Fewer mature forests

In Central Africa Low-access forests are at least 2km from public roads.

Only eight percent of Central Africa's large tracts of low-access forest are in parks and reserves, but even these protected areas are poorly managed, the paper said. A 'large tract' is a continuous block of primary forest at least 1,000 sq km in size.

Researchers found similar results a continent away, in Chile. Although primary forests still predominate in the South American nation, less than 45 percent of current forest cover is mature native forest, they said.

And "only one-third of all forest is in relatively undisturbed tracts of at least 10,000 hectares," said the report. Fragmented stands of mature native forests, smaller than 5,000 hectares, were, in some regions, the only remaining habitats for a variety of species, such as small, endangered mammals and birds, it added.

Govt policies blamed

The report blamed government policies for encouraging people to clear forests thousands of years old to make way for plantations of exotic tree species. As a result, prehistoric araucaria forests and alerce trees, the second oldest living trees in the world, are in danger, it said.

The project's findings on Venezuela were more optimistic. Approximately half of the country is still covered by primary forest, most of which is located in the Guayana region, home to much of the nation's wildlife and plant species. One-fifth to one-third of the South American country's forest land is protected, it estimated.

But forests in Guayana remain at risk from logging, mining, agriculture and population pressure, said researchers. Also, the legal status of half of the protected areas was unclear.

"This lack of clarity results from overlaps between protected areas with conflicting objectives and uncertainty regarding protected area boundaries established in official documents," said the report.

In North America, less than half of forests and woodlands are in tracts of land measuring at least 200 sq km. More than 90 percent of those are in Alaska and Canada. In the lower 48 US states, only six percent of forests are relatively undisturbed in large tracts and just 17 percent of those are strictly or moderately protected, researchers found.

Hope in Ikea and others

While most of the findings left conservationists with little hope, the researchers maintained that their work is already having a positive impact and slowing down the destruction of old-growth forests.

Jim Strittholt, head of Global Forest Watch USA, pointed to a number of companies and banks — such as Ikea, the world's largest home furnishings company and ABN Amro, one of Europe's leading banks — that were using the research to assure that their wood supplies or investments were not promoting deforestation.

"Our mapping work is helping the private sector make better business decisions, which helps safeguard the environment," said Strittholt.