August 13, 2001
They are nature's "water towers," providing billions of gallons of fresh, clean, filtered water. They are home to thousands of indigenous peoples, and storehouses of biodiversity, at least 80 percent of which has not yet been catalogued.
Yet in as little as ten years' time, biologists warn, the world's cloud forests—evergreen mountain forests that are almost permanently shrouded in mist and clouds—may be all but gone.
They are being cleared for cattle grazing and coca plantations. Logged to provide fuel for heating and cooking. Paved over and developed to make way for transportation and telecommunications networks. They are being damaged and dried out by air pollutants and global warming.
Now, cloud forests are rising to the top of the world's scientific and conservation agenda. But will scientists learn enough about these important ecosystems to be able to convince the world to conserve them before they are gone forever?
Percy Nuñez, a research biologist in Cuzco, Peru, who studies cloud forests, estimates they are disappearing at a such a rate that the "the cloud forest will all be gone in the next ten years."
"We don't know about our resources—80 to 90 percent of the cloud forests are a mystery to us all," Nuñez said.
Yet scientists have barely begun assessing the wide range of species that clod forests harbor, he noted. "We don't have biologists working in cloud forests. We are not training young scientists to do the work," he said.
Now, he added, "we are working with NASA, using satellite images to get some idea of what's there before it is gone. There aren't any field guides available."
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