Isolated Forest Patches Lose Species, Diversity

Isolated Forest Patches Lose Species, Diversity:

"A new study is revealing that decades of fragmentation of Wisconsin's forests have taken a largely unseen toll on the sustainability of these natural ecosystems.

The long generation times of trees and other plants have masked many of the ecological changes already under way in the patches of forest that remain, says study co-author Don Waller, a professor in the Department of Botany and Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at UW-Madison. 'Things may look healthy, but over time we see an erosion of biodiversity,' he says."