Cattle ranching contributes greatly to the demise of the amazonian rainforest. In Brazil, small-scale agriculture represents one third of the rainforest lost per annum. Mother Nature plays her own part in the deforestation of the Amazon using fires, droughts and tropical storms. In Columbia, the rainforest is mostly destroyed by poor farmers trying to make drug plantations. They do this because it generates more income than any other crop.
Geography 101 13 July 2013 The Deforestation of the Amazon The deforestation of the Amazon is going to have catastrophic consequences. The legal and illegal results of chopping down trees in this great wetland, has dire consequences that our generation may not suffer but future generations will. “The Amazon is a vast region that spans across eight rapidly developing countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana, an overseas territory of France. The landscape contains: one in ten known species on Earth; 1.4 billion acres of dense forests, half of the planet's remaining tropical forests; 4,100 miles of winding rivers, 2.6 million square miles in the Amazon basin, about 40 percent of South America” (“Amazon”). So you ask, why does it matter if we chop down a few trees?
Statistics state, and I quote; “at this rate the rainforest only has 28 years left “. The ecosystem is being severely affected by deforestation. When trees are cut down and not replaced, there is no longer structure to hold the important and
Rainforest Facts • Rainforests are home to more species of plants and animals than the rest of the world put together. • An astounding number of fruits (bananas, citrus), vegetables (peppers, okra), nuts (cashews, peanuts), drinks (coffee, tea, cola), oils (palm, coconut), flavourings (cocoa, vanilla, sugar, spices), and other foods (beans, grains, fish) come from rainforests. • We lose between 50 and 130 species every day – 2 to 5 species per hour are being lost forever due to tropical deforestation. • Tropical rainforests act as a global air conditioner - by storing and absorbing carbon dioxide from the air, storing the carbon, and releasing fresh, clean oxygen. • Over 2000 tropical forest plants have been identified as having anti-cancer properties.
The nomadic hunter-gatherers, Penan are one of the last such groups in south East Asia. Out of the 10,000 Penan living in the Malaysian state of Sarawak, Borneo, only 20 nomadic people are left. Its been estimated that at least 70% of Sarawak’s primary forest has been licensed for logging and in some places there have been two or three logging passes in the last twenty five years. The Penan tribe is not protected because there is thought to be too much wealth in the forest such as wood and mining and food and the government is poor so they need all the wealth they can get and they don’t see much point in looking after one small tribe when it is better to look after the whole country first. The Penan tribe is a threatened culture due to deforestisation and globalization because their culture is being ‘brought’ by logging companies trading them new technology for land and local knowledge.
The Amazon Rainforest is and has always been a miraculous and extremely marvelous wonder of the world. It is the home to native Akawaio Indians (exactly how many is unknown), 358 mammal species, 15 percent of the world’s primates, as well as over 55,000 species of plants. Currently, 24 species of mammals and 1,000 plant species are threatened to extinction largely and mainly because of mass deforestation. Columbia's Amazon Rainforest is well over 55 million years old, has had human inhabitants both living in and visiting there for as far back as man can remember. Although old and beautiful in its existence, it is also very dangerous.
Deforestation In Thailand Proposal Large areas of the world’s forest are being destroyed as you read this sentence. Volcanoes are erupting, floods are flooding and fires are burning; but with these occurrences the forest will emerge again to become what it once was. Unfortunately this is not the major reason that the forest are being depleted, Deforestation, the permanent loss of forestland, caused by humans is the main cause. With natural disasters the land is left to replenish itself but with deforestation the land becomes un-sustainable to forest life. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) “estimates that the annual rate of deforestation is about 1.3 million square km per decade, with the main deforestation occurring in the tropics where a wide variety of forest exist”.
• Greenpeace says that at least 267 marine species are known to have suffered from getting entangled in or ingesting marine debris. Nearly 90% of that debris is plastic. • Americans consume more than 10 billion paper bags per year. Approximately 14 million trees are cut down every year for paper bag production. • Most of the pulp used for paper shopping bags is virgin pulp, as it is considered stronger.
The inhabitants cut down the trees to build canoes and spiritual statues at a sustainable rate but, with the rat population at twenty million on a sixteen mile long island, the trees could not reproduce effectively. In turn, the tree loss prevented the construction of canoes for fishing so the natives hunted down the entire land bird population and begun the struggle for survival. The introduction of an invasive species, alone, caused the indigenous of Easter Island to face starvation. Today it isn’t just an island of people that face extinction; it is the entire world population that’s nearing its downfall and, we are struggling with a myriad of factors contributing to environmental degradation. The poison from the dart frog of the Peruvian rainforest contains a chemical that is the basis for a compound that is vital for the process of transplanting human organs.
"More than 60 percent of the original African rain forest is gone." (Pulsipher) As well as depleting their rain forest Africans are cutting down their dry forests as well to make way for farmland and fuel wood and other settlements. Not only are they clearing their lands but they are grossly depleting the fish populations off of their coasts. THe wildlife which provides the protein, medications for the prevention of diseases, and revenue from tourism are becoming severely threatened by habitat loss. Desertification is spreading and water supplies are decreasing at an a rate faster than nature can replace it.