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Even the remaining North American forests are still being cleared for new development. Photo credit Corel Photo Clipart CD. |
| While the tropical forests are disappearing fast, others have already vanished. Forests right in the United States once covered millions of acres, but with the pressures of more and more people settling the area, they disappeared in just a few decades. Logging of the Southeastern forests led to the extinction of species such as the Carolina parakeet and the ivory-billed woodpecker. The Carolina parakeet was the only parrot native to the United States, and was once common throughout these Eastern broadleaf forests. The last individual died in captivity around the same time as the last passenger pigeon (likely once the most abundant bird species on earth) died in its cage at the same zoo. The ivory-billed woodpecker was one of the largest and most studied woodpeckers, although it was never very abundant. Each pair of breeding birds required as much as 2000 acres of territory in a mature forest. This made them especially susceptible to habitat loss, and led to their extinction in 1951. |
loss of biodiversity -- page 5 of 5
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related topics
[temperate forests] [birds] [woodpeckers]
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