SBS News visits the Paluma Range National Park in Queensland to see firsthand how the trees and species inhabiting the area have been impacted.
Professor Williams studies ecology and global change biology.
“Maybe 10 years ago we did some fairly comprehensive modelling of predicting what the future effects will be and now they’re just all coming true, depressingly accurately, actually.” “The projections for the future are that we are looking at 50 or 60 per cent of all of the species in this rainforest going extinct,” he said.The Wet Tropics Management Authority says climate change is the biggest threat to rainforests.
That should be good news for rainforests, but the report adds: “There is evidence from observed weather station records that a higher proportion of total annual rainfall in recent decades has come from heavy rain days,” meaning the rain is increasingly coming from single events.Professor Williams says the rising heat and drying base of the rainforest is systematically pushing vertebrates further up the mountain.
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