RAINFOREST.HTMLThe Destruction of the Rainforests
By Sandra Koerner
and
Jessica Neely
Did
you realize that our Rain Forests are being cut down and being
wasted? People are now trying to stop this, but it's to late.
Most of what used to be tropical rain forest's have vanished. Over
1,000 species, plants, and animals are killed everyday that we haven't
even discovered yet!
The things that are causing these precious forests to disappear are agricultural practices (farming), logging, cattle ranching, developement of countries and the desperate need for firewood. Half of the earths rainforests are already gone, and experts say that most of what is left will be gone in 50 years or less. Most of the cutting was done since 1960.
Today every minute of the day and night almost 100 acres of rainforest fall to the chainsaw or the bulldozers blade. Experts fear that
most of the remaining rainforests will be gone by the year 2040.
Burned tree stumps and devistation, mark what was once productive forests and farm land for the Korat plateau in northeastern Thailand. 
Erosion
caused by clear cutting brings flood and drought on the region
and its 20 million inhabitants. Loss of the once abundant forest cover
has plunged the area into poverty.
In Africas Ivory coast
75% of the forests have been
cut down or burned since 1960. All of the primary rain forests
in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Haiti have been cut. A combination
of logging and slash-and-burn farming has brought disaster to the forests
of Indonesia and Sabah.
Why should we care? What good
is a rain forest? Rain forests conserve water, prevent drought and flooding,
and regulate local climates. The forests have a major effect
on the global climate too.
When they are cut and burned a significant amount of carbon dioxide
is added to the heating of the planet.
The biological diversity
of these forests ecosystems is astounding. About half of all known
plant and animal species are found in tropical rainforests. Yet
only 1% of these animals have been studied by scientists. Already
about 7000 medicines have been derived from tropical plants somwhere
in the forest, as an unknown
plant may hold a cure for cancer.
The most versatile inhabitance
of the forests are perhaps the most endangered spiecies. The
people of the 1300 forest tribes are now scattered throughout the globe.
But time is running out for these people, and we may never have
the chance to learn from them about all the rain forests secrets.
The rain forests are probably the earths most precious biological
resource.
English explorer
Charles Waterton was one of the first to test a tropical rain forest
plant value as medicine. Traveling through Guyana in 1814 , he witnessed the
preparation of a substance that natives used to coat the tips of their arrows in
order to kill game quickly by poisoning.
When water evaporates it changes into a dry gas called water vapor. A lot of water vapor
in the air makes the weather muggy. If there is little water vapor the air
is dry. The amount of water
that a tropical rainforests early morning veil of mist returns to the air through
evaporation is enormous. In forests such as those making up the Amazon, well
over 50% of the rainfall consists of water previously transpired and evaporated
from the forest.
The carboniferous period, some three hundred
million years ago, was a warm period that favored lush vegetation growth
and the formation of swamps. Dead and dying plants, included
numerous fern species littering
the swamps waters were compressed , and eventually turned into peat, the
first stage in the formation of coal.
The first slash and
burn torch was lit in 1964 by the generals of Brazil's former military
government. Then through the 1970s and 1980s, 15000 of miles
of highway were hacked through Brazil and paved in the name of
National Intigration. The world bank put up $432 million to help
finance called the Polonoroeste
development project. Then the world bank stood by and did nothing
to correct gross irregularities of forests' destruction.
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