The continued and wanton destruction of our natural forestry whether it be for the timber trade, the growth of urban areas as our population continues to climb or for farming, is destroying our earth. It could be considered one of the greatest contributors to global warming alongside greenhouse gas emissions as well as being the driving force behind a massive amount of extinctions, both plant and animal.
Our forests play a vital role in the health of our planet and yet everyday we cut down huge swathes of trees without any regard to the impacts it will have on our future. 80% of Earth’s land animals and plants live in forests, and many cannot survive the deforestation that destroys their homes, directly contributing to the extinction of thousands if not millions of species. Land approximately the size of Panama(every year) or about 36 football fields worth of trees every minute are destroyed due to deforestation.
Although the effects are greatest in places like Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other parts of Africa deforestation has impacted almost every continent on earth bar Antarctica. Even the United States has lost 90% of its indigenous forests since the year 1600.
There are multiple ways to deforest an area with the 2 most common being burning and clear cutting. Clear cutting is when large swaths of land are cut down all at once. A forestry expert quoted by the Natural Resources Defense Council describes clear cutting as "an ecological trauma that has no precedent in nature except for a major volcanic eruption."
Both of these are incredibly detrimental to the health of our planet and there are far better options when it comes to clearing land, our forests cover approximately 30% of the planet, around half of what they did before humans began cutting them down.. at our current rate all the forests of earth will be gone within 100 years leaving us a barren wasteland of what we once were. combined with our current rates of pollution earth is on the fast-track to destruction.
There are new tree plantations and the number of these is growing each year but it still only counts for a fraction of the destruction we're responsible for. Humanity really needs to step up it's game when it comes to the planting of new trees as we cut down old ones.
unfortunately when we clear forests it can have a dramatic effect on the land they were once on. Without the cover of the canopy of trees the sun often dries up the earth around it and leaves it almost impossible to grow new forests in that area. At the rate it takes for us to destroy a forest compared to the rate it takes to grow one we have no chance of keeping up unless something dramatic is done very soon.
Humans are responsible for such dramatic destruction of the planet we live on its almost unfathomable. Imagine if we treated the planet the same as we treat our homes, or vice versa. Earth is our home, just on a wider scale and yet the level of respect we show it is negligible.
The amount of wildlife lost to deforestation is a whole nother story. 137 species of animals are becoming extinct each day, which adds up to 50,000 species disappearing every year, because of deforestation.If we don't act now, 10% of the worlds species will die out within the next 25 years. That is an insane number when you think about it.
Sure it may not be species you've ever heard of, it may not be something like elephants tigers or bears, but it is still an entire species of animal wiped out due to the selfish needs of us humans. Not only are we ruining the environment, we are ruining the circle of life.
source
A koala sits where her home once was
All of these things together culminate in a truly off-the-scale level of destruction to our planet, our band-aid fixes we're trying to use to solve these issues are doing nothing and everyday we inch closer to an apocolpytic planet where nothing can survive. Some of the greatest minds on the planet have been warning us for decades, centuries even and yet we refuse to listen and continue down this path of unsustainable damage to our home.
We need action NOW. We need to do something NOW. If we don't, we are leaving a very grim reality for our children and theirs, as well as every other species on the planet.
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Resources
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/deforestation/
https://www.livescience.com/27692-deforestation.html
https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation