The Earth is made up of many different eco-systems, but perhaps none more spectacular and life-sustaining than forests. We depend upon theworld’s forests to regulate climate, to clean air andwater, to conserve precious soil, and to provide habitatto much of the planet’s wildlife.

Forests of all types are giving way to populationpressures, causing irreversible damage to an integralpart of our biosphere. In 2005, the Earth’s forests covered a little less than four billion hectares (ahectare is equal to 2.47 acres), a 23 percent decreasefrom the forest area in 1700. However, while the totalforest area is still decreasing, landscape restorationand natural expansion of forests has reduced the ratefrom 8.9 million hectares per year between 1990-2000to a rate of 7.3 million hectares between 2000-2005.1

That’s a decrease in damaged forest area about the sizeof Ireland.

Trouble in the TropicsOf primary global concern is the loss of the Earth’s

tropical rainforests. Tropical rainforests are defined pri-marily by two factors: location (between the Tropics ofCapricorn and Cancer) and level of rainfall. Rainforestsreceive from four to eight meters of rain each year. Thefive meters of annual rainfall in Borneo is five times theannual rainfall in New York City. Due to a constant climate, tropical rainforests grow all year long.

Every community in the world feels the effects ofrainforest destruction. Although tropicalforests cover less than seven percent of theglobal land surface, they are home to morethan half the species of all living things.Rainforests are a treasure house of foods,medicines, and other resources we haveonly begun to discover. Less than one percent of rainforest species have evenbeen studied for their potential usefulness.

Each year, some 140,000 sq km of rainforests are destroyed.2 According toestimates from the Food and AgriculturalOrganization (FAO) of the United Nations,the worldwide rate of tropical rainforestclear cutting has been close to one percentper year since the 1980s. Can’t imaginewhat that looks like? If the world’s tropicalrainforests were combined today, theywould occupy an area approximately equalto the lower 48 United States. Annually,rainforest area equaling half the state of

Florida is removed.3 In fact, all the pri-mary rainforests in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Haiti have been destroyed;the Ivory Coast rainforests have been completelylogged out; and the Philippines and Thailand havedepleted half of their rainforests since 1960. Of theeight million square miles of tropical forests that oncecircled the globe, less than half remain.

A Deep-Rooted ProblemWhat drives humans to deplete this precious

ecosystem? The causes of rapid tropical deforestationare numerous and often interconnected. The initial andperhaps most devastating cause has been the lack ofknowledge concerning the rainforest. A case study inBrazil illustrates this point. In 1969, Brazil enacted aNational Integration Program with the goal of populating Amazonia with thousands of landless andunemployed people. This was in response to overpopu-lation and inequitable distribution of land and wealth.Another goal of the program was to encourage wealthyinvestors to clear the forest lands in order to raise cattlefor export to the industrialized world. The programproved a disaster; the people implementing the projectfailed to realize that the richness of the once-vastAmazon forest is held in its trees, not its soil.

Tropical rainforest land cleared by slash and burntechniques will support a farmer for only a year ortwo before the soil erodes and the farmer is forced to

Deforestation: The Unkindest CutStudent Reading

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Causes of Deforestation in the Amazon, 2000-2005

Small-scale, subsistenceagriculture, 33%

Cattle ranches, 60%

Fires, mining, urbanization,road construction, dams, 3%Logging, legal and illegal, 3%

Large-scale, commericalagriculture, 1%

Source: Rhett A. Butler / mongabay.com

Causes of Deforestation in the Amazon, 2000-2005

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1620

1950

2007

relocate elsewhere to continue thisdestructive process. If the Brazilian gov-ernment had conducted research priorto program implementation, vastamounts of Amazonian forests couldhave been saved. Because of this over-sight, the government’s goals to createadditional habitation and grazing landdid not materialize. Unfortunately, thisscenario has been repeated in different regions of the world.

Another leading cause of deforesta-tion, particularly in parts of Africa andAsia, is the demand for fuelwood. Two infive of the world’s people depend onwood for fuel to cook and to heat theirhomes, and 100 million people suffer a“fuelwood famine” and are unable tomeet their minimum fuel needs.4 Theendless search for wood dominates thelives of millions of women and childrenwho spend anywhere from 100 to 300days each year looking for fuelwood.

Timber cutting is yet another majorcontributor to tropical deforestation.Tropical forests provide about one-fifthof all the wood exported worldwide forindustrial uses. In the process of har-vesting timber, industries build roads tofacilitate retrieval of the wood deeper inthe rainforest. These roads open onceimpenetrable forests to exploitation byminers, hunters, ranchers, and farmers.

Some processes of cutting timberhave more harmful impacts on the envi-ronment than others. When timber isclear-cut, all the trees on an area of landare cut down. This destroys the habitatof many species. Even if trees arereplanted, often only one or two speciesof trees are reintroduced. The formerwealth of biodiversity never returns.Frequently, timber is harvested by selec-tive cutting, a process through whichharvesters cut only the trees they wishto sell, leaving the rest of the forestintact. While still destructive, selectivecutting is less harmful to the forestecology than clear-cutting.

There are a number of ways to reducethe impact of logging on surroundingforests and to reduce waste for harvesters.Source: The Native Forest Council, Forest Voice, Vol. 19, No. 1, Spring 2007.

Extent of U.S. Virgin Forests

They include moving fallen trees to roads without dis-turbing soil, carefully planning roads that carry trees outof forested areas, cutting all vines off of selected trees, anddirecting which way trees should fall.

Deforestation NorthAmerican-Style

While tropical rainforest destruction is a globally sig-nificant issue, the cutting down of temperate rainforestsin North America, which are found in the PacificNorthwest from California through Canada and intoAlaska, has developed into a serious controversy on thiscontinent. Since the turn of the century, the U.S. ForestService has been managing National Forests in the U.S.,with a total of 155 national forests covering 187 millionacres.5 The Forest Service is mandated to manage the

forests for multiple, often conflicting, uses, including timber harvest, recreation, wildlife habitat, wilderness,watershed protection, and range management.

Of particular concern to many environmentalgroups is the management of the most ancient, or oldgrowth, forests by the timber industry and the federalgovernment. Old growth forests are typically olderthan 200 years, characterized by large trees, densecanopies, and an abundance of diverse wildlife. At onetime, old growth rainforest covered some 15 millionacres in the Pacific Northwest. Today, less than one-sixth of this original forest remains.6 Some areasincluded trees ten feet wide, 275 feet tall, and 1,120years old. But, because of their size and the qualityand strength of their wood, old growth trees representvaluable lumber to loggers.

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The Rainforest in Dollars and CentsA scientific team from the New York Botanical Garden assessed, in U.S. dollars, the profits that could be made over a 50-year peri-od from harvesting and selling the natural products of trees and plants found in an untouched hectare (2.471 acres) in theAmazonian rain forest in Mishana, Peru. Compared to the potential profits from using an equivalent area for cattle ranching or fortimber production, the rain forest is twice as valuable if left standing.

One Hectare of Rainforest Can Be Used For

Over 50 years, the total value of the yield from one hectare is

Timber Production

$3,184 $2,960$6,330

Harvest of NaturallyOccuring Produce Cattle Ranching

Rubber Plants(24 plants)

Wild Chocolateand Legumes

(12 plants)

$391.02Palm Fruits(70 plants)

$199.67Other Fruits(11 plants)

$49.50

$57.60

The Canadian province of British Columbia (BC)faces the same challenges while trying to balance pro-duction with conservation. British Columbia lost 65million acres (26.3 million hectares) of forest between1950 and the 1990s, yet has made a shift in the rightdirection.7 A 1999 study by the World Wildlife Fundfound that about 8.4 percent of Canada’s forest land isprotected. Eventually Canada hopes to increase this to12 percent, which will be the largest area of legallyprotected forest in the world.8

After the FallBoth tropical and temperate rainforests are rapid-

ly disappearing; they are being logged and burned farfaster than they are being replenished. Many of theeffects of deforestation are the same for all types offorests. One of the catastrophic consequences of continued deforestation is mass species extinction,especially in the tropical rainforests, home to 50 to 70percent of all the species on the planet. In fact, theWorld Conservation Union estimates that the currentspecies extinction rate exceeds the natural extinctionrate by between 1,000 to 10,000 times.9

Additionally, since the roots of trees and smallerforest cover stabilize the soil, deforestation allowspotentially severe local damage from rainfall includingerosion, flooding, and landslides. Globally, deforesta-tion affects the world’s climate. A broad uprising of airfollows the rainforests around the equator, drivenpartly by heat absorbed by tropical forests. This mas-sive uprising helps drive the circulation patterns ofthe entire global atmosphere. Tropical deforestationcan disrupt this process, resulting in reduced rainfalland altered weather conditions over a large portion ofthe globe.

All deforestation adds to the atmospheric pool ofrising carbon dioxide emissions, hastening the processof global warming. An intact forest naturally removescarbon dioxide from the air and stores it through theprocess of photosynthesis. When trees are burned orcut down and left to lie, much of the carbon returnsto the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Tropical defor-estation releases 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxideevery year – that’s 20 percent of the total global CO2

emissions.10

Pleas for the TreesOld growth forests, as well as tropical rainforests,

play significant roles on Earth. Fossil records showthat the forests of Southeast Asia have existed for 70to 100 million years. Such long standing, environ-mental resources will be drastically changed if nations

continue to sacrifice the Earth’s long-term health forshort-term profits. Unless individuals and communi-ties take swift action to end the steady assault on theworld’s old forests, little of today’s ecosystems willremain for the next generation. Given the pressures ofpopulation growth, poverty, and debt, saving theseforests poses a number of challenges. Internationalcooperation is required to reduce wood demand andimplement sustainable forest management. Methodsto halt forest destruction include the equitable distri-bution of forest land among indigenous people, popu-lation stabilization, and limiting forest harvest to onlynaturally occurring resources, such as fruits, vegeta-bles, chocolate, and rubber. Over $11 billion of theseproducts are already traded internationally each year.11

In the long term, this sort of forest management willreap greater profits than the limited returns of timberproduction and cattle ranching.

Governments and individuals need to educatethemselves about the dangers of forest destruction, orignorance will lead to further disaster. Every destroyedacre of old growth forest takes centuries to replace.

Endnotes1 “FRA 2005 – Key Findings,” Food and Agriculture Organization ofthe United Nations, 2005, 10 October 2007<http://www.fao.org/forestry/site/32177/en/>.2 “Tropical Forests,” World Wildlife Fund, November 2006, 10October 2007, <http://search.panda.org>.3 Edward O. Wilson, The Future of Life (New York: Vintage Books,2002) 59-60.4 “2003 Pre-conference,” Sustainable Resources, 2004, 10 October2007 <http://www.sustainableresources.org/>.5 United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service 10 October2007 <http://www.fs.fed.us/>.6 World Resources Institute, Environmental Almanac (New York:Houghton Mifflin Co., 1993).7 World Resources Institute.8 Environment Canada, “Canada’s National Environmental IndicatorSeries 2003: Strictly protected forest area in selected forest eco-zones,” April 2005, 10 October 2007 <http://www.ec.gc.ca/soer-ree/English/Indicator_series/>. Path: Forestry.9 “Species Extinction,” World Conservation Union, 2004, 10 October2007 <http://www.iucn.org/themes/ssc/>. Path: For Media; IUCNMedia Briefs; Media Briefs on Species Extinction.10 “Deforestation Plays Critical Climate Change Role,” NASA EarthObservatory, May 2007, 10 October 2007<http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/>.11 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, State ofthe World’s Forests 1997 (Rome: Food and AgricultureOrganization, 1997).

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