(CNN) — While the eyes of the world have followed the effect of Haiti’s devastating earthquake on Port-au-Prince, an ecological disaster has been quietly unfolding elsewhere in the country.
The mountainous forests of Haiti’s Massif de la Hotte region have more critically endangered species than anywhere else on earth, according to Alliance for Zero Extinction, a global initiative of 52 conservation organizations.
The area has 42 mammals, birds, reptiles, plants and amphibians on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Globally Threatened Species.
More importantly, 13 species of frog on the verge of extinction live only here. The Alliance for Zero Extinction reports nowhere else on Earth has more than nine such species.
However, only 3 percent of Haiti’s original forests remain and they are disappearing at a rate of 10 percent every five years, according to a group of conservation groups including Birdlife International and the Zoological Society of London.
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