The loss of wild animals through hunting in Lambir Hills National Park, Malaysia is slowly killing off the forest, according to an article in Science AAAS News.

Rhett Harrison, a tropical ecologist with the World Agroforestry Centre is one of a network of scientists looking at the impact of hunting on seed dispersal.

Harrison has found that the seedlings of tree species which rely on animals to disperse their seeds are much more tightly clustered around the adult trees, placing them at much greater risk of disease.

The density of saplings has increased by 25% probably because no deer or pigs are feeding on them. For the tree species whose seeds are dispersed by wind, pop apart of just drop to the ground, there has been no discernible change.

Until the early 1990s Lambir Hills National Park contained more than 1100 species of tree together with a wide range of birds, gibbons, flying foxes and other animals. Within a decade almost all the larger animals had been shot for bushmeat.

Stuart Davies, an ecologist with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), says tree diversity has declined over the past 15 years and this is likely to alter the future makeup of the forest.

Read the full story: Hunting Leads to Rapid Change in Tropical Trees