No convincing evidence for decline in tropical forests

"Claims that tropical forests are declining cannot be backed up by hard evidence, according to new research from the University of Leeds."

So where do false green claims end? Greenpeace was saying 20 years ago that 30,000 species a year - that's right, a year! - were going extinct, so give us money. The evidence? They had no idea, just heard it somewhere and it sounded like a lot of extra donations.

Turns out it was based upon a mathematical model built upon false assumptions like these about forest loss.

Then another paper gets published recently saying that upwards of 50,000 species may be going extinct a year. The evidence? There was none, none at all, just the same dodgy mathematical modelling.

Now, I realise many possible extinctions could be of insects and other arthropods that haven't even been formally described yet, but the hard question remains valid for people making these types of outlandish claims - name, say, just 10 animals (insects, birds etc) that have definitely gone extinct in this time due to forest loss.

For those of us in the know, we realise just how hard this question is because we know that the list of actual confirmed extinctions over the last 100 years is a very, very short list.

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