Deforestation

Image courtesy of Doris Ames

Forests are home to an incredible variety of plant and animal species, serve as natural barriers to natural disasters such as flooding, mud slides, and avalanches, and are a vital component of healthy ecosystems.  Deforestation is often cited as one of the leading causes of the enhanced greenhouse effect because forests are one of the earth’s natural regulators of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.   The World Resources Institute reported that over the past 150 years, deforestation has contributed to at least 30 percent of CO2 buildup in the earth’s atmosphere.[5]  The United Nations published the results of a 20-year study on threatened plants and reported that introduction of non-native plant species and deforestation has caused 12.5% of the world’s plant species to become “critically rare.”[6]

Many of the earth’s threatened and endangered species live on very small areas of forested land--especially those found within our tropical rainforests--and rely on the ability to move through a habitat corridor of specific size and type for survival.  This means that deforestation of even small sections of forested land can result in an irreversible loss of species.  Because new species are still being discovered[7], we may never learn whether they are important for medicinal, evolutionary, scientific, or agricultural development.

Large multinational logging corporations champion new approaches to logging which include “sustainable forestry practices” that entail replanting species of trees that grow quickly so as to allow them to be felled as part of a more “sustainable” logging practice. While this may seem like a good strategy, this approach usually entails planting a limited number of tree species doing very little to bring animal and plant biodiversity back to an area.  Additionally, many of the types of trees that are chosen for replanting such as eucalyptus achieve rapid growth by tapping large quantities of groundwater, impoverishing surrounding vegetation and threatening to dry up local water courses.[8]

We have destroyed our forests—most several times over—to a point where we have completely debilitated their natural ability to resiliently re-establish themselves quickly. It is now time to take a more active role to encourage reforestation that is modeled after polyculture forests with a profusion of biodiversity to help encourage the natural regeneration processes of the forests we have destroyed.