By Agnethe Dalby
About 137 plant, insects and animal species are lost every day due to rainforest deforestation!
Biologists estimate that more than 50.000 species disappears every year. Most rainforests are cleared by bulldozers, chainsaws or fires. This is followed by farming and ranching operations. It is motivated by money interests but sometimes also by survival of the locals.
It is estimated that 10 million Indians who lived in the Amazonian rainforests 5 centuries ago, today are reduced to less than 250.000. Since the 1900's more than 90 indigenous tribes have been destroyed in Brazil alone.
About 4000 football fields of rainforest are destroyed every hour!
Short-sighted government and multi-national logging companies and land owners have some of the blame why the rainforests are being destroyed. The consequences are severe for both industrial and developing countries as the forests are the "lungs of Earth".
Water pollution, soil erosion and malaria epidemics
The consequences of deforestation are many. When the trees disappear, it brings about soil erosion, and with no forests left to block for the rain, it falls directly on to the ground. The flow of surface water is then increased and the soil, containing chemicals that pollute the water, is washed into the rivers and taken on to the seas and Ocean. Cutting down the forests can even trigger malaria epidemics as the deforested landscape, is left with more open spaces and ponds of water, which seems to create ideal life conditions for the mosquitoes. When the forests are destroyed carbon dioxide, formerly stored in the trees, are send back into the atmosphere. We do not know if it has devastating consequences for increased global warming.
