Human Involvement In The Rainforest!
Major Threats
- Logging interests cut down rain forest trees for timber used in flooring, furniture, and other items.
- Power plants and other industries cut and burn trees to generate electricity.
- The paper industry turns huge tracts of rain forest trees into pulp.
- The cattle industry uses slash-and-burn techniques to clear ranch land.
- Agricultural interests, particularly the soy industry, clear forests for cropland.
- Subsistence farmers slash-and-burn rain forest for firewood and to make room for crops and grazing lands.
- Mining operations clear forest to build roads and dig mines.
- Governments and industry clear-cut forests to make way for service and transit roads.
- Hydroelectric projects flood acres of rain forest.
Solutions!!
- Sustainable-logging regimes that selectively cull trees rather than clear-cut them would save millions of acres of rain forest every year.
- Campaigns that educate people about the destruction caused by rain forest timber and encourage purchasing of sustainable rain forest products could drive demand down enough to slow deforestation.
- Encouraging people who live near rain forests to harvest its bounty (nuts, fruits, medicines) rather than clear-cutting it for farmland would save million of acres.
- Government moratoriums on road building and large infrastructure projects in the rain forest would save many acres.