INTRODUCTION
Deforestation
is clearing Earth's forests on a massive scale, often resulting in damage to
the quality of the land. Forests still cover about 30 percent of the world’s
land area, but swaths the size of Panama is lost each and every year. The
world’s rain forests could completely vanish in a hundred years at the
current rate of deforestation. Forests are cut down for many reasons, but most
of them are related to money or to people’s need to provide for their families.
The biggest driver of deforestation is agriculture. Farmers cut forests to
provide more room for planting crops or grazing livestock. Often many small
farmers will each clear a few acres to feed their families by cutting down
trees and burning them in a process known as “slash and burn” agriculture.
Logging operations, which provide the world’s wood and paper products, also cut
countless trees each year. Loggers, some of them acting illegally, also build
roads to access more and more remote forests—which leads to further
deforestation. Forests are also cut as a result of growing urban sprawl. Not
all deforestation is intentional. Some is caused by a combination of human and
natural factors like wildfires and subsequent overgrazing, which may prevent
the growth of young trees.
Deforestation has many negative effects on the
environment. The most dramatic impact is a loss of habitat for millions of
species. Seventy percent of Earth’s land animals and plants live in forests,
and many cannot survive the deforestation that destroys their homes.
Deforestation also drives climate change.
Forest soils are moist, but without protection from sun-blocking tree cover
they quickly dry out. Trees also help perpetuate the water cycle by returning
water vapor back into the atmosphere. Without trees to fill these roles, many
former forest lands can quickly become barren deserts. Removing trees deprives
the forest of portions of its canopy, which blocks the sun’s rays during the
day and holds in heat at night. This disruption leads to more extreme
temperatures swings that can be harmful to plants and animals. Trees also play
a critical role in absorbing the greenhouse gases that fuel global warming.
Fewer forests mean larger amounts of greenhouse gases entering the
atmosphere—and increased speed and severity of global warming.
The quickest solution to deforestation would be to simply stop cutting down
trees. Though deforestation rates have slowed a bit in recent years, financial
realities make this unlikely to occur. A more workable solution is to carefully
manage forest resources by eliminating clear-cutting to make sure that forest
environments remain intact. The cutting that does occur should be balanced by
the planting of enough young trees to replace the older ones felled in any
given forest. The number of new tree plantations is growing each year, but
their total still equals a tiny fraction of the Earth’s forested land
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