Rainforest Destruction

1. Rainforest Destruction Megan Mallory Period 5

2. Background Information • The planet earth plays the part of home to millions of species of plants and animals. • 2.5 acres of tropical rainforest may support two hundred different kinds of trees; it may also house hundreds of kinds of ferns, vines, shrubs, and fungi. That same amount of land may house thousands of species of animals including monkeys, exotic birds, butterflies, beetles, frogs, bats, and cats (Nations, 13). • They are also home to some of the oldest and most interesting societies on earth, like the pigmies in Africa, Indian hunters in South America, and some isolated tribesmen in Borneo (Nations, 13). • There are many different ecosystems in the world, but the tropical rainforests are the most vast and complex, holding many cures for diseases, and millions of plants and animals.

3. Reasons for the Problem • Over hundreds of years, the need for wood and land has increased with the growing population of the Earth • Today, people are eliminating plants and animals at the rate of more than a thousand species per year. • The clearing and burning of the worlds rainforests is also known as deforestation. • People don’t realize that the rainforest land that they clear is home to millions of plant and animal species and many cures for diseases, some that have not even been discovered.

4. Current Status • The situations of rainforest deforestation are more and more becoming aware to everyday people. • There are adopt and acre funds where an acre of rainforest is saved and you make a donation to help preserve more of them. There are also wrist bands that profit rainforest preservation • Today less that one fourth of the original rainforests are still alive. • They cover only six percent of the globe, but hold more than half of the world’s plant and animal species and eighty percent of the world’s vegetation. • People are starting to realize that rainforests hold many things that help humans function, like coffee, rice, medicines that treat inflammation and induce vomiting, and many fruits.

5. Analysis • As tropical rainforests are destroyed, many other things are destructed as well. • Drugs made from plants from the rainforests treat: malaria, headaches, and convulsions; there are hopes to find cures for cancer and heart disease in the rainforests as well. • Coffee beans, Brazil nuts, vanilla, cinnamon, rice, corn, sweet potatoes, manioc (tapioca), sugarcane, bananas, oranges, mung beans, guavas, mangoes, papaya, pineapple, peanuts, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, and pigeon peas are just a few of the plants found in the rainforest that are used in modern human life. • Cutting down rainforests in bulk causes heavy rains and floods. • When the rainforest is standing, the canopy absorbs most of the rainfall, and the rest trickles down to the other levels, finally leaving a small portion of that rain for the ground. With no trees, the water would go directly to the ground and erode it horribly.

6. Reasonable Solution/How to Solve the Problem • The problem of rainforest deforestation will never be completely solved, but it can be helped; earth’s population will always be growing and expanding over all of the land on our planet. • Since the population has rapidly been growing faster and faster in the last few years, we need more houses, and more farmland; there is no stopping the need for these things. • Another way to solve the problem is to make deforestation illegal, except for extremely necessary reasons. • Some of these reasons could be fire hazards, or if a disease came up in an area and it needed to be burned to rid of the disease.

7. Prediction- Future Outcome • If this problem is not solved, there soon will be very little to no rainforests on the earth and its products could never be found again. • Since most of the diseases in third world countries came from within the rainforest, either transferred by bites of animals or bad water and or food, it would only make sense that the cure would also be hidden in the rainforest. • If the rainforests are completely destroyed, the unfound cures could never be discovered. • If the forests are preserved, thousands of species of plants and animals will be preserved along with them. Cultures of Indian tribes that have been around for hundreds of years could be preserved as well. • Since the cures would be mostly natural, they wont have to be mostly made in a lab, and therefore it would hopefully be inexpensive and given to not just middle class people but also people living in third world countries who often are neglected when diseases are being treated.

8. Works Cited • Attenbourg, David the Living Planet: Jungle • New York: Ambrose Video Publishing Inc, 1984 • Doggett, Scott. “Birds Verses Buzz Saws in Jungle Joust.” Los Angeles Times • 21 September 2004. 2 March 2005 <http://192.168.10.3:15871/cgi-bin/blockpage.cgi?ws-session=1224802264>. • Nations, James D. Tropical Rainforests: 1988 • Pepper, Obie. “Remote Sensing of the Rainforest.” 11 December 2002. 2 March 2005 <http://emporia.edu/earthsci/student/peper1/rainradar.htm> • Quammen, David. “The Green Abyss.” National Geographic March 2001: pg. #38-83 • "The Rainforest Site." About our Projects . . . 24 March 2005 http://www.therainforestsite.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/CTDSites.woa/58/wo/L45000ST600VM000D6/2.0.45.1.3.0.1.0.25.0.CustomContentLinkDisplayComponent.0.0 • Sunn, Bloyd. Endangered Species. San Diego: 1989