Forests are becoming a memory

In the U.S., many people value our National Parks system for the relaxation and the chance to commune with nature that these great, legally protected, expanses provide. It’s the solitude that make these destinations so desirable. The ability to escape the concrete and asphalt creep that claims so much of our natural surroundings, more and more every year, is priceless.

Trees, with their almost magical ability to immediately sooth the wary soul with their presence and grandeur, is what most people mention as their reason for traveling to our national parks.

The world’s rainforests, and the life-sustaining qualities they impart onto the world as the single most important buffer between clean air (providing 20% of our oxygen) and the destruction of our atmosphere, are disappearing at alarming rates. Not from what nature itself has wrought against them, but from mankind’s quest for survival.

Deforestation, by ranchers, farmers and timbermen, is occurring at the rate of 60 acres per minute! Take a moment to let that figure sink in. Every second, one acre of this world’s tropical forest is destroyed. For perspective, this amounts to an area the size of Mississippi being cleared every year!

Twenty years ago, tropical forests were cut down at the rate of 50 acres per minute, now it’s 60 acres per minute.

Warnings go unheeded
Warnings from scientists, conservation groups, religious leaders and others were repeated at December's climate conference in Bali, Indonesia and remain unheeded while the world’s consumers continue to support the very reason that these forests are being cut down.

It may surprise you to learn, it certainly surprised me, that Africa is now the leader in deforestation. Almost 1 percent (10 million acres) of the forests of Sudan, Zambia and Tanzania are lost every year to small-scale farming.

South American forests are replaced for cattle ranching and growing soybeans.

Southeast Asians cut down or burn forests for giant plantations of palm trees for the palm oil they produce. This palm oil is used in food processing, cosmetics and other products.

Clearing these forests for profit has led to the extinction of animal and plant life, soil erosion, changes in weather patterns, loss of forest peoples’ livelihoods, and the increasing threat of climate change. None of these considerations have any effect to motivate those responsible for deforestation.


Deforestation creates pollution
Not all trees that are cut down make it to the lumber industry, some are not suitable, some are in areas that make it unprofitable to haul them out, so they are burned where they fall, or they are left to rot. The pollution from burning these trees accounts for 20 percent of manmade emissions. This number blows me away. Only the burning of fossil fuels creates more pollution than the burning of these trees.

To exacerbate the problem of pollution, hauling ‘profitable’ trees away by truck, cutting trees down with chainsaws (much larger ones than you see at your neighborhood home improvement store) and tearing trees down with tractors, all add to the fossil fuels pollution numbers.


What is the alternative?
The more trees we lose to individual profiteers the fewer there are to absorb the global warming carbon that is emitted by cutting them down. The effect of pollution increases with every tree that is removed. Growing new trees is not the answer, they grow too slowly and they are not planted where they are needed most. You simply cannot replace tropical rain forests by planting trees elsewhere. Rain forests have grown where they have because that is the best environment for them.

If we are going to allow the continued destruction of earth’s ability to absorb our pollution then we need to find a replacement for these trees. We must have ways to absorb the huge amounts of carbon we create or we are going to destroy ourselves either from the increasing temperature of the earth or by suffocating ourselves due to lack of usable oxygen.

In light of this, is deforestation necessary to continue to feed the world’s ever increasing demand for beef, biofuels and other products? Is deforestation necessary to provide livelihoods for the farmers and ranchers to support their families, their communities and the rest of the world?

If moving industries to third world countries in order to give those populations jobs so they stop replacing our forests with farms, then that is what we need to do.

Food supplies are decreasing due to global warming and a shift to farming for biofuel and cattle feed. Deforestation is the cause of the former and the result of the latter.

The world has large-scale farming operations and industrial concerns that grow food crops to help feed the world’s human population. A larger percentage of this production is being redirected towards feeding beef and for biofuel, both of which add to deforestation.

If improving the production of these farms, through bio-engineering or whatever other means, will stop deforestation, then this is what we need to do.

Meat producers spends millions in advertising trying to sell us on the health benefits of eating more meat. The resulting debate between the pro and con issues of eating more or eating less meat will go on forever. The bottom line is that it is a personal choice. But, here is another issue that needs to be considered, the drive to produce more beef is destroying our forests. And this falls heavily on the side against eating more beef. We are destroying ourselves by trying to ‘eat healthier’, if you buy into what the meat producers are saying.

Do we really need more cattle for beef? Do we really need the extra farm land for biofuels? The argument for diverting our trend from a meat-based diet and towards a grain-based diet has never been as keenly felt as it is right now.

If we have to become vegetarians in order to save ourselves, then that is what we need to do.

If we have to turn these rainforests into living museums and promote ecotourism to protect them, then this is what we need to do.

If we have to declare rainforests as medical research labs in order to protect them, then we need to do it.

Why should so few, take away so much, for so little, that which means so much to the world’s future?

Mankind has gotten very proficient at destruction. It seems we dedicate more time, energy and money at improving ways of destruction than what we spend on anything else. Many people have tried to change this course to one of preservation but not enough is being done. The importance of maintaining these forests for what they represent as well as how they actually serve us is not being taken seriously enough.

In the opening to this post I mentioned that our national parks are legally protected. But, how long will it be before the profit mongers are able to convince a financially strapped administration to allow them access to our forests and begin the destruction of that which the rest of us prize most?

Do you think the law will protect our national parks? The U.S. Forest Service, one of those financially strapped administrations, granted a foreign mining company the rights to drill for uranium just miles from a popular lookout point in Grand Canyon National Park!

Will survival of the whole outweigh the profits to the few? Has it ever happened in the past?


For more research on rainforests:
Rainforest facts


Research shows dollars and sense in protecting rainforests

Rainforest Alliance

Rainforest Foundation

Rainforests books for children