Tropical Forests in Big Trouble

When Portuguese colonizers landed on the shores of South America 500 years ago, a dense forest stretched across the southeastern coast of what is now Brazil into parts of present-day Paraguay and Argentina. The Atlantic Forest, as it is now known, covered an area twice the size of Texas and was the source of one of the colonizers’ chief exports: the red dye of the Brazilwood tree, which gave Brazil its name.

Today, more than trees there have been felled. The decimation is so extensive, according to in , that a majority of the tree species in the forest now face extinction—far more than previously thought The authors say their findings have profound implications for tropical forests on other continents.