The rain forest cover has been reduced to 55% of the original area, due to human activities, and the rate of loss of these forests is increasing at an alarming rate. For instance, the rate of loss of these forests was doubled during the period 1979-1989, and about 1,8% of the remaining forests are disappearing every year.

This leads every year to loss of 0.2 to O. 3 per cent of all species occurring in the forests at a particular time. In other words, if two million species are confined to the forests alone, 4000 species will be lost every year due to deforestation.

This means, if there are 20 million species available in forests, as the current estimates indicate, about 40,000 species will be lost every year. Among these, if there are endemic species restricted to a particular area, the clearing of a single habitat or mountain ridge may lead to immediate extinction of the species.

If anything close to this level of increase in population and economic activity is witnessed in future, World's biodiversity is destined to be completely wiped out from the surface of the Earth. This demonstrates the crisis of the loss of biodiversity and the need to conserve it.