Why should we care? People depend on forests for foods, medicine, shelter, our climate comes from the very forests that we are destroying. With so many plant and animal species still undiscovered, we may be destroying the cure for cancer or aids...
Why do we clear forests? logging, mining, clearing trees for cattle grazing and building dams and highways. The human population has streatched passed its carrying capacity which means simply we are overpopulated. And we think we can solve this problem by using up MORE of our recources which are already not enough to support us.
class endangered vulnerable total threatened extinct
Mammals 484 612 1096 89
Birds 403 704 1107 108
Reptiles 100 153 253 21
Amphibians 49 75 124 5
Insects 160 377 537 73
Other animals 894 1194 2088 343
2.4 acres (1 hectare) per second: equivalent to two U.S. football fields
214,000 acres (86,000 hectares) per day: an area larger than New York City
78 million acres (31 million hectares) per year: an area larger than Poland
6 - 9 million indigenous people inhabited the Brazilian rainforest in 1500 In 1992, less than 200,000 remain.
Approximately 137 species of life forms are driven into extinction every day; or 50,000 each year.
While you were reading the above statistics, approximately 149 acres of rainforest were destroyed. Within the next hour approximately 6 species will become extinct.
Our atmosphere works much like a greenhouse. The sun emits short-wave radiation which passes through the atmosphere to Earth. The Earth then radiates some of the sun's energy back into the atmosphere in the form of long-wave infrared radiation. Although nitrogen and oxygen, of which the atmosphere is almost entirely composed, do not retain heat, certain trace gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, and nitrous oxide, trap some of the infra-red radiation. In other words, without the greenhouse gases, the temperature on Earth would be approximately 33C colder than it is now, covering the Earth with ice.
Through photosynthesis, forests take in Carbon dioxide and emit oxygen. But since deforestation has wiped out so much of the worlds forest, the amount of Carbon Dioxide has increased, along with Methane, Nitrous Oxide, CFC's and other gases produced by industrial sources and fossil feuls and burning of waste products...
Because of an increase in Greenhouse gasses, Global warming may have already begun. Since the industrial era, there has been a 170 billion ton increse in our atmospheric gases. Global temperatures are slowly incresing. Ice in the Arctic is slowly decreasing, Canadian lakes have warmed several degrees. Weather has become extreame, with an increase in hurricanes, floods, windstorms, tornados...The Tuvalu islands in the Pacific experienced four cyclones in 1941, an average year. In 1989, however, Tuvalu endured 21 tropical cyclones!
Species will be wiped out because of global warming. Sea levels will rise due to condensation and cause major flooding. With the Ice caps melting, the sea level may rise 200 feet. Droughts may cause major food producing nations to have a drop in production leading to starvation and economic issues.. The worlds supply of fresh water may be contamadated with salt water from the sea level rise.
One fourth of the medicines available today owe their existence to plants. Yet fewer than 1% of tropical forest species have been thoroughly examined for their chemical compounds.
A typical four square mile patch of rainforest contains as many as 1500 species of flowering plants, 750 species of trees, 125 mammal species, 400 species of birds, 100 of reptiles, 60 of amphibians, and 150 different species of butterflies. In one study, one square meter of leaf litter, when analyzed, turned up 50 species of ants alone. (National Academy of Sciences.)
