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| Forests |
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Why work on forests?
WWF-UK's work on forests
WWF network's work on forests
Why protect our forests?
Forests contain as much as 90 per cent of the world's terrestrial biodiversity - from charismatic mammals such as the great apes, tiger and panda to millions of species of plants. We cannot conserve species without conserving their habitat.
Forests purify the air we breathe, provide life-saving medicines and are key to controlling soil erosion and preventing the flooding that threatens so many lives. They also provide energy for cooking and heating homes in places where no other resource is available.
But the world's forests are in crisis. Approximately half of the Earth's original forest cover has been lost for ever and, of the half that remains, only around one tenth is protected, and most of this is badly managed.
WWF-UK
WWF-UK's five priorities are:
- to secure effective management of existing forests, through measures such as legal protection and community ownership;
- to increase the amount of forest under protection, as critically endangered forest types - such as dry tropical forests - are currently under-represented in Protected Area Networks;
- to promote sustainable management of forests. To this end, WWF endorses and supports the FSC as a credible, independent certification scheme. This means that forest management delivers social, environmental and economic benefits for local people, communities and businesses;
- to stimulate demand for forest products from sustainably managed forests. In this way, we seek to reduce our consumption impact on the world's forests, thereby ensuring forest resources are available for future generations.
- Examine the role of UK and European financial institutions, the forest industry and European governments in contributing to illegal forest destruction in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America.
WWF network
The WWF Forests for Life Programme represents the sum of all WWF network activities that contribute towards the achievement of WWF's three global forest targets:
- Protect
The establishment and maintenance of viable, representative networks of protected areas in the world's threatened and most biologically significant forest regions by 2010.
- Manage
100 million hectares of certified forests by 2005, distributed in a balanced manner among regions, forest types and land tenure regimes.
- Restore
By 2005, undertake at least 20 forest landscape restoration initiatives in the world's threatened, deforested or degraded forest regions to enhance ecological integrity and human well-being.
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Capital Offence: Is London failing the forests
WWF-UK, March 2006
This report shows that nearly half of all the London Local Authorities have no policies in place to prevent them from sourcing illegal forest products and only a third asked for documentary evidence that the product had come from a credibly certified forest.
WWF-UK
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WWF-UK > Research > The issues we work on > Forests
