In the past hundred years, humans have begun destroying rainforests at an alarming rate. Today, roughly 1.5 acres of rainforest are destroyed every second. People are cutting down the rainforests in pursuit of three major resources:
- Land for crops
- Lumber for paper and other wood products
- Land for livestock pastures
In the current economy, people obviously have a need for all of these resources. But almost all experts agree that, over time, we will suffer much more from the destruction of the rainforests than we will benefit. There are several factors involved in this scientific assessment:
- To begin with, the land in rainforest regions is not particularly suited for crops and livestock. Once the forest is cleared, it is even less so -- without any decomposing plant life, the soil is so infertile that it is nearly useless for growing anything. Generally, when people clear-cut a forest, they can only use the land for a year or two before the nutrients from the original plants are depleted, leaving a huge, barren tract of land.
- Cutting large sections of rainforest may be a good source of lumber right now, but in the long run it actually diminishes the world's lumber supply. Experts say that we should preserve most of the rainforests and harvest them only on a small scale. This way, we maintain a self-replenishing supply of lumber for the future.
- Rainforests are often called the world's pharmacy, because their diverse plant and animal populations make up a vast collection of potential medicines (not to mention food sources). More than 25 percent of the medicines we use today come from plants originating in rainforests, and these plants make up only a tiny fraction of the total collection of rainforest species. Fewer than 1 percent of rainforest plants have been examined for their medicinal properties. It is extremely likely that our best shot at curing cancer, AIDS and many other debilitating diseases lies somewhere in the world's diminishing rainforests. With some 137 rainforest species disappearing every day (the most rapid extinction rate in the history of the world), there's a good chance that we're losing valuable medicines by the minute.
The world's rainforest are an extremely valuable natural resource, to be sure, but not for their lumber or their land. They are the main cradle of life on Earth, and they hold millions of unique life forms that we have yet to discover. Destroying the rainforests is comparable to destroying an unknown planet -- we have no idea what we're losing. If deforestation continues at its current rate, the world's tropical rainforests will be wiped out within 40 years.
To learn more about rainforests and to find out what you can do to help with their preservation, check out the links below.
- Earth Day
- How Global Warming Works
- How the World Wildlife Fund Works
- How the Nature Conservancy Works
- How Bats Work
- How Venus Flytraps Work
- How Animal Camouflage Works
- How Composting Works
- How the Hydrogen Economy Works
- How Safaris Work
- How the Sun Works
- What is the difference between a hardwood and a softwood?
- If the polar ice caps melted, how much would the oceans rise?
- How much water is there on Earth?
- How many sheets of paper can be produced from a single tree?
- Are climate skeptics right?