Forest conservation: Remember Gran Chaco-Response

Abstract

The subtropical dry forests are experiencing rapid clearing in the southamerican Great Chaco region, mainly for soybean production in Argentina. This is causing biodiversity loss and soil salinization. This forests are unique for the floristic richness and the dense forest cover in a region characterized by semiarid climatic conditions. The authors complain to the DRYFLOR team for their exclusion of the Gran Chaco, the world´s largest continuous dry forest, from their definition of tropical and subtropical dry forests in their paper Plant diversity patterns in neotropical dry forests and their conservation implications.