We think these are important messages for the public to know, and are so grateful for excellent pieces of science journalism, like this article published today in @mongabay.bsky.social!

We recently found that while reforestation can provide a net benefit to biodiversity by helping to create habitat and mitigate climate change, employing afforestation or bioenergy cropping as a tool to address climate change may lead to disastrous outcomes for biodiversity.

🌎 🌍 🌏 Our findings provide one piece of evidence to help inform decisions. However, there are many reasons to address climate change beyond its biodiversity impacts. Likewise, there are many other impacts these 3 strategies may have on both the environment and humans that are essential to consider.

🏭 Addressing climate change must start with a reduction of our reliance on fossil fuels and emissions of CO2 from other sectors. However, removal strategies will still have a role to play in removing past CO2 emissions from the atmosphere.

🌾 In contrast, the habitat loss from afforestation or bioenergy cropping, outweighed the benefits these strategies provide for biodiversity through climate change mitigation.

🌲 We found that reforestation benefited biodiversity both by creating habitat for species and by helping mitigate climate change.

⚖️ While all three strategies may benefit biodiversity by helping address climate change, the overwhelming majority of their biodiversity impacts are mediated through changes in habitat availability for species.

🐸 🐦 🐘 🦎 We modelled how over 14,000 vertebrate species will respond to the deployment of reforestation, afforestation, and bioenergy cropping - accounting both for how these solutions will change the habitats available to species and their role in helping lessen climate change induced range shifts.