Rainforest Depletion: Adverse Effects on the Environment Essay

Brazil’s rainforests and America’s rainforests are great examples of the negative effect that deforestation has on these specific areas. One of the rising challenges in our rapidly growing world is the destruction of rainforests and how it is slowly ruining the world that we live in. Deforestation has a lot of destructive impacts on the environment that is surrounding us, one of the most important being its effect on the climate. The fast rise in the world’s population, calling for high demand of resources, is only hastening the effects of deforestation, which can hopefully be put an end to through the enforcement of a handful of simple, key, and sustainable solutions.

Today, the total percentage of forest cover of the earth is approximately thirty percent (“Deforestation”). That is about nine percent of the world’s total surface. The largest rainforest is the Amazon River Basin, located in South America. The Amazon is home to many species of animals, insects, plants and trees. Many of the trees and plants in the Amazon produce about twenty percent of the oxygen on earth, and absorb carbon. However, the Amazon is decreasing in size every day due to the ongoing deforestation of the land. Deforestation is when the forest of the land are cleared or destroyed, in order to be used for other actions (“Deforestation”). The Amazon is twenty percent less than it was about forty years ago (Wallace). In just about

As you are reading this, sixty seconds from now approximately over 100 acres and roughly about 2,000 trees are being destroyed at an alarming rate worldwide. As a result an estimated 140 species of rainforest plants and animals go extinct every day. That is the equivalent of at least 42 million acres of tropical forests in Asia, Africa, and Latin America are lost each year, an area the size of the state of Washington (RFA). Now some may say in a geographical perspective the continents listed above are not in correlation to North America’s natural resources, but it is of vital importance to take swift precautionary methods to help reduce this process before it is too late. Even the most conservative estimates project

Three to six billion trees are cut down each and every year! Deforestation is a huge problem in the rainforests. Because these forests are home to much of the Earth’s species of life. Covering 30 percent of our land forests provide homes, protection, and oxygen for humans and other wildlife in the forests. There are 7.125 billion people that count on the benefits provided by the forest, which is: food, clothing, traditional medicine and shelter. If something isn 't done soon to reduce our carbon footprint, we will not have forests of any type to soak up the carbon dioxide(CO2) in the atmosphere.

Rainforests are being destroyed at a rate of 150 acres a minute. If this fact doesn’t astonish you then understand that that means a total of 78 Million acres a year. While this is in itself a horrible act it is also causing many species to go extinct thanks to loss of habitat. The main culprits of this are large corporations such as McDonald’s and Burger King. The greed of large corporations leads them to mistreat earth’s largest and most inhabited forests, leaving many species struggling for survival.

With the population growing and more and more cities developing, people are using up natural resources at an astounding rate. In order to combat this humans are forced to find new sources for these resources. Humans have hardly explored the rain forests because they have not been really open to human exposure7. This gives them reason to believe that they can find natural resources there so they are searching them and destroying the ecosystems there at the same time. The search for resources along with the destruction of the rain forests for agriculture and for living space is having negative effects on the rain forest and the environment.

Since the start of the 1970s, an area of the rainforest the size of California has been lost. In the Brazilian Amazon three million acres were lost between 2007 and 2008 (Amazon Rainforest). This is due to the illegal logging, soy plantations, cattle ranching, and other human actives. The forest is being threatened and so is everything that depends on it.

Many rainforests are at risk of going extinct. The beautiful rainforests are going extinct because many people and companies are cutting down trees in the rainforests. This can also put the world in danger the world and its temperature. Many people are trying to get people to stop cutting down the trees.

The Earth is losing “upwards of 80,000 acres of tropical rainforest daily.” To put this into perspective this is 1/9 of the size of the state of Rhode Island that is being destroyed daily. Not only is the destruction of the rain forest causing problems for only the organisms living within the rainforest but also for people and industries worldwide. We need to save our rainforests so that we can continue to survive and also help the animals that live within the areas being destroyed. People are cutting these areas down for more development and empty land but causing more harm than good in the long run.

Large forests are destroyed for raising beef, lumbering, and use of wood for clear cutting for crops or profit (Cooney). Wood has been in a huge demand for several centuries to build houses and buildings. However, this is causing other animals losing their shelter and habitat in forest. The topsoil has been wearing off from the soil which is creating soil erosion. Topsoil contains all the healthy nutritions that will make the soil fertile. Plants needs this fertilization and all the proper nutritions in soil to grow. However, water erosion in soil is causing soil erosion. Which is creating the land a desert where no one can live.

We found that worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation website to be reliable and informative. The World Wildlife Fund organization was founded in 1961, and has been one of the top organizations working in the field of the wilderness preservation. The information they display on this website gives a deeper look on the reasons for deforestation, how it is affecting our earth, and how we can help. The information is more cut and dry, and would not be as effective for kids than it is for adults. We found this information valuable in our research in rainforests.

to our world. Statistics show that only 30% of the earth’s rainforests are left and that is an

Rainforests have been declining rapidly over the last few decades. There are various factors responsible for this decline, resulting in serious impacts on the environment and the economy. Critically discuss the causes of deforestation and solutions to it.

Likewise, deforestation of the rainforests hinders the once fertile soil and uproots millions of species of flora and fauna. It is estimated that twenty-seven thousand plant and animal species are lost each year. Even more, cutting away

One and a half acres of the rain forest-“the Lung of the Earth”, are lost every second. In fact, they now cover only a mere 6% of the earth's land surface compared with 14% when humankind first settled. Experts estimate that the last remaining rain forests could be consumed in less than 40 years. Obviously, deforestation has been becoming an alarming phenomenon for the whole world. Writing about this issue, Laura Lopen, John Maier and Dick Thompson express some quite strong opinions.