MOSCOW — The alarming rate at which the world’s rain forests are being depleted poses a threat to human survival, a delegate to a worldwide conservation union told students and faculty members at the University of Idaho Wednesday night.
“All this loss of natural resources constitutes a threat to humanity and to the prosperity and survival of the world,” said William A. Worf of Missoula. Worf is a U.S. delegate to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN).
As the rain forests are razed, burned and harvested to make way for agricultural land, the world loses so much of its supply of carbon dioxide. The loss of rain forests also may affect the world’s climate, Worf said.
Of the world’s rain forests, 40 percent have been converted to other uses, he said.
The depletion of rain forests is the top project priority of the IUCN, Worf said. An international commission will study the effects of eliminating rain forests, and could make recommendations to governments of the world that are involved.
Worf was at the university to explain the IUCN to forestry students. He said that the union is a 450-member coalition of organizations interested in conservation of the world’s natural resources. It is the only international scientific organization in the field, he said. Members include groups from 54 countries, U.S. groups like the Sierra Club, Audubon Society, National Wildlife Federation and such U.S. agencies as the Forest Service, Fish and. Wildlife Service and Parks Service.
Worf is a retired director of recreation and lands for the Forest Service’s northern region, based at Missoula.
The IUCN is powerless, except for its persuasion of countries to use wise development practices, he said. A major precept of the IUCN is that development and conservation do not have to be in competition.
“Conservation is not in competition with development, but is an integral part of it.”
Several faculty members in the audience questioned why the IUCN has not taken a stand on the problem of overpopulation, which they said is the root of all development-resource issues.
Worf said the issue had been discussed, but dropped for fear of alienating some countries.
“If that was the underlying fear, then I think somebody is out of date,” one faculty member said, urging Worf to press for IUCN to take a position on the population explosion.
Worf began his speech by saying IUCN works to help the world deal with the need to use resources to develop. “The world’s natural resources are being lost at the rate and scope that is detrimental to humanity’s ability to feed its numbers.”
The IUCN studies endangered species, national parks and protected areas, ecology, environmental planning, educational tools, and helps develop environmental law, he said.
This century alone, the world has lost 53 bird species and 68 mammal species to extinction, he said.
In answer to a question, Worf said the rate at which the world’s resources are being depleted has stayed about the same in recent years. While the developed nations are slowing their use of resources, the developing nations are using more and more of their resources, Worf said.
This story was published in the Dec. 10, 1981, edition of the Lewiston Tribune.
