Environmental Writing

10/11/20 Issue of the Week-Rainforest Deforestation

By AmandaREO and capricornwriter

Rainforests are amazing. They support millions of animals, plants, and people with food, shelter, and water. If you've ever been lucky enough to visited one, I'm sure you were amazed. Rainforests are breathtaking, with magical plants and brilliant creatures around every corner. You could call them a utopia, fairy lands, paradise, and be completely right. But, because of our greed and stupidity, we're destroying them. Rapidly, plants are being torn up. Animals are dying because of lack of habitat and food. And us? Well, lets just say we have a death wish.

656,000 square miles of forests will be gone, which is double the size of Texas! In fifteen years, if we continue our awful ways of cutting down forests left and right, large segments of Central Africa, the Amazon, and the Mekong will be gone, many other forests too, as well as all the jobs, water, paper, etc. that come with forests. Because of our greediness in taking down the trees with no recognition of its life and what it is providing, more than forty percent of forests have been destroyed. In fact, every second part of a forest the size of a football field is being destroyed!

In Borneo, one of the most biologically diverse forests on one of the largest islands, things aren't looking too good. By big businesses illegally logging, making palm oil, and making pulp plantations a third of Borneo has been destroyed. So many other forests tell the same tale: In Sumatra, deforestation is caused by much of the same threats. The Congo Basin is home to many endangered species like the forest elephants and bonobos. But if we continue with our rapid deforestation ways, forests won't be home to any living thing. In fact, it won't be anything at all.

No trees mean no animals. We're all connected in the food web, which is made up of many ecosystems, each animal being necessary for our world to work. Without birds, snakes (and many other types of animals) would be out of a food source, and maybe even go extinct. Than, with snakes extinct, bobcats would be out of a food source, and maybe go extinct too! Eight in ten animals live in forests. You can see how catastrophic that would be. The crisis would lead up to us...and then we would go extinct too! I'm not exaggerated, people. This is as serious as a heart attack.

Not just animals, but more than one billion humans live in forests. Humans like us, living in cities, also depend on forests too. They provide us with fresh water, medicine (plants in rainforests supply us with a quarter of what we need to make medicine!), food, and many other resources. We'd be a pretty pathetic species without rainforests, and would die out.

The Amazon is called the "Lungs of the Planet" for a reason. The Amazon, as well as all the other rainforests, supply us with clean air to breath. Each year, the Amazon takes out two billion tons of carbon dioxide out of our air. Rainforests are vital in slowing climate change, and without them many experts think that we'll lose the battle against it. And, because of our ever so stupid qualities, humans are destroying the biggest source of help that would save humanity.

Since 1990, 129m hectares of forest, about the size of South Africa, has been destroyed by humanity. All those lives, animal and human, gone. Climate change, extinction, poverty and death of the human race...all because of deforestation. Our greediness, selfishness, and overall stupidity is going to be the end of our world. This is just one issue, just one of the many human caused environmental catastrophes, and the effects of this one is already showing up. I ask you, if we know all about how much harm this will cause...why is this still happening?

You can help by not wasting lots of paper. As you probably have heard, paper is made from trees, and one of the reasons trees are getting cut down is for paper, so if you really don't need paper (for random things like a paper airplane, etc.) then don't use it. A good idea is to use scrap paper, and to use cloth napkins.

If you read a lot, it is Wattpad after all, it is a good idea to borrow books from the library instead of wasting paper and buying a book.

If you go camping, be careful with fire, you most definitely don't want to burn yourself, but you also most definitely don't want to kill thousands of trees with a fire!

If you like to go on nature walks then yay! Go right on ahead, but make sure you stay on the trails! If you don't go stepping on all the tree's roots then the better chance the trees will live a longer life!

Try to plant a tree, maybe in your backyard. The more trees the merrier!

Always buy from sustainably sourced paper. There will be labels on the package to tell you if it is sustainably sourced.

Try not to buy products with irresponsibly farmed palm oil and soy oil.

And try not to eat as much meat! And, if you do, make sure it's local and sustainable!

Spread word! This problem is major, and might just be the death of us!