The Awa people are among some of the people losing their land. Not only are people in these areas losing their homeland, but species of animals are losing their homeland as well. Every year the Amazon loses huge amounts of forest. The Amazon helps stabilize local and global climate. “Over the time period documented, August 2012 to February 2013, the rates [of deforestation] increased an estimated 26.82% and an area of the Amazon larger than the size of the city of London disappeared” (“Deforestation Takes Flight in the Amazon”).
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”.
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.
The Killer of the Amazon Rainforest The Amazon rainforest, located in Brazil, is an essential part of our planet. According to the Amazon Center for Environmental Education and Research (ACEER), the Amazon rainforest holds over two thirds of all the fresh water found on Earth and also produces twenty percent of Earths oxygen supply. Unfortunately, a devastating transformation is taking place throughout the majority of the forest because of the process of deforestation. There are many negative impacts that come with this. Some of which include, global warming, destruction of habitat, and soil erosion.
• The largest flower on Earth comes from a tropical forest - the Rafflesia grows up to 1 metre across. • About 2,000 trees per minute are cut down in the rainforests. • At least 11 million hectares (110,000 square kilometres) of tropical forest are lost each year, approximately 20 hectares (50 acres) per minute. • Every second, a slice of rainforest approximately the size of an American football field (1 acre) is mowed down. That is 86,400 football fields of rainforest per day, or around 30 million football fields of rainforest each year.
You can help protect it. Learn how by clicking here. Why are rainforests disappearing? Each year millions of acres of rainforests are disappearing. Every second, an area the size of a football field disappears.
Today the Amazonia has had 20% of its forest destroyed as a result of cattle ranches, mining, logging and agriculture. Much of this has occurred in the last 50 years. A focus on Brazil: Brazil possesses the greatest portion of the Amazonia. Since 1970, over 600,000 sq km have been destroyed. Between 2000 and 2006 alone, 150,000 sq km (an area larger than Greece) was lost.
For instance, people deforest grown trees without planting young trees. Deforestation means the felling and clearing of forest cover or tree plantations in order to accommodate agricultural, industrial or urban use. It involves permanent end of forest cover to make that land available for residential, commercial or industrial purpose. Due to massive trees clearance, various species of animals are lost. They lose their habitat and forced to move to new location; besides, many cannot survive the deforestation that destroys their homes.
In fact between 1780 and 1980 sixty acres of wetland were destroyed every hour (ODW). Ignoring the importance of wetlands has lead to half of the wetlands in the entire United States being drained or filled. Ohio has had 90% of its original wetlands destroyed; this is only trumped by California in largest percent of wetland destroyed. Wetlands are a valuable resource in our ecosystem that seems to receive little discussion with most environmentalists. A piece of land is determined to be a wetland by three characteristic.
For the first time in history they will be included on the World Conservation Union’s red list of threatened species (Oliver). According to the United Nations Environment Program and the Nature Conservancy, “around 30 percent of the world's coral reefs are already damaged, some irreparably. At the present rate of destruction, by the year 2050, a breathtaking 70 percent of the world's reefs will have disappeared” (Oliver). In regions such as the Indo-Pacific, where 75 percent of the world’s reefs are located, reefs are being destroyed at 1 percent a year, which is “twice as fast as the rate of destruction of tropical rainforests”