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Deforestation: The growing problem A tropical paradise stretches out ahead of you. A vast expanse of trees and life are all around you. The air exudes freshness and beauty. There are beautiful birds singing their songs and home seems like it is on another planet. Trees cover the area like a rug covering a floor. Not a hint of disturbance is visible. Then, without warning all the beauty of this place is lost. Everything that this place possessed that you admired is lost forever. The buzzing sound of chainsaws erases the bird’s songs. One by one all the trees around you are felled. The rug of trees is now torn to shreds. Deforestation is a very real problem in the world today. The precious resource that we are destroying is the source of our life. Several people that know how important the trees are to our survival are in denial about the rate of deforestation. The destruction that is being caused by this loss of forests is much more than one might think. As the movie "The Lion King" told us repeatedly, all things are affected and have some effect on the web of life. Trees and all plants are producers, meaning they make their own food. All the energy every living creature possesses starts from producers. If we remove the producers from the food web all biodiversity will be lost from the world. All animal life will also be devastated. We have several times heard experts say that some animal or the other is on the route to extinction because it is losing its native habitat. Everyday more of this habitat is lost. What we fail to realize is that several of the animals that are perishing are, in fact, a very important resource to us. There are species of frogs and snakes whose venom may one day be used to cure cancer and AIDS. Several miracle drugs come from animals that dwell in these forests. Several other miracle drugs that haven’t even been discovered yet are being lost because of the disappearance of our forests. Several people argue that deforestation cannot be stopped because we need more land for people to live on. The growing population is indeed a great threat to forests and trees. However, it is important to understand that cutting down trees gives life to this generation, but what of the next. Cutting our trees can only need to catastrophic results for our children and grandchildren. We cannot continue to massacre our trees like this. Short-term solutions have always failed to work in this world, and that will be the case if we continue to kill our trees. Several countries have realized the urgency of protecting the wild life and have enforced laws protecting trees. However, many of the same countries have enforced laws that stimulate cutting them. Conservation programs aplenty, but success has been achieved by very few of them. Conserving our trees is like an investment to protect our future. If we do this successfully, we would be building toward a perfect world. Imagine yourself in a tropical paradise. A vast expanse of trees and life are all around you. The air exudes freshness and beauty. There are beautiful birds singing their songs and home seems like it is on another planet. Trees cover the area like a rug covering a floor. Not a hint of disturbance is visible. This continues on forever and no disturbance interrupts your peace. This is the goal that we must all strive to achieve by working together. Date posted: February 14, 1999. What do you think
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