Loss of Forest Essay

Environment issues affect life on this planet from the smallest parasite to the human race. We, as human beings, may not understand the severity of the possible consequences that deforestation poses. Since deforestation has had no severe effect on us yet, we ignore the problem; however, deforestation can cause a major problem for our environment. Some of the problems are carbon dioxide, wasting paper, climate change and logging. Deforestation increases the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide in our world’s atmosphere acts like a sheet of glass on a greenhouse. It lets the sunlight through but does not let all the heats back out. The continued degradation of our forest heightens the threat of global warming because the trees and other plants that take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to be used for photosynthesis are gone. The burning of wood or its decay contributes to the release of more carbon which combines with oxygen in the atmosphere thus increasing further the levels of carbon dioxide that cause the greenhouse effect. Paper is one of the most important things in the world. Without it we can’t do almost anything. We can’t study, write, learn and does a lot of stuff which is impossible to do without paper; everywhere we go, we see pieces of paper on the ground and people using multiple tissues to wipe their noses. But what we must realize is the paper products we use daily could have been a part of a forest which functioned to enrich and hold the soil, release oxygen, collect and recycle water. By wasting paper products, we are wasting forests; the simple fact is that the more paper we use, the more forests need to be cut down to serve our paper need. So we need to lessen our dependency on the paper and try to use as little as possible and recycle it. The most important cause of deforestation is logging, the conversion of forested lands for agriculture and cattle-raising, urbanization, mining and oil exploitation, acid rain and fire. However, there has been a tendency of highlighting small-scale migratory farmers or â€Å"poverty† as the major cause of forest loss. Such farmers tend to settle along roads through the forest, to clear a patch of land and to use it for growing subsistence or cash crops. In tropical forests, such practices tend to lead to rapid soil degradation as most soils are too poor to sustain agriculture. Consequently, the farmer is forced to clear another patch of forest after a few years. The degraded agricultural land is often used for a few years more for cattle raising. This is a death sentence for the soil, as cattle remove the last scarce traces of fertility. The result is an entirely degraded piece of land which will be unable to recover its original biomass for many years. It is a major mistake to think that such unsustainable agricultural practices only take place in tropical countries. Many parts of North America and Western Europe have become deforested due to unsustainable agriculture, leading to severe soil degradation and in many cases abandonment of the area by the farmers. We should recycle all the things that are made of trees for example paper bags and furniture because it leads to the less cutting of trees and also the products of trees will be used wisely. After cutting down a tree we should plant too. As a result there will be a balance of ecosystems and the rate of deforestation will diminish. We need forests more than ever to protect the world’s remaining plants and living creatures, to prevent flooding, to slow human induced climate change, and to provide the paper on which education and communication still depend.