DEFORESTATION OR ECOLOGICAL DESTRUCTION
A global ecological disaster is a very real possibility in light of the rate at which forests are being devastated and biological species wiped out. Deforestation, or the deliberate removal of trees, is one of the most longstanding and significant ways in which man has changed the environment. It is believed that humans have been destroying the environment since the Mesolithic and Neolithic times. Because man has found so many uses for trees, they are being used faster than they can replace themselves (Goudie, 1986). Although trees are renewable resources, they are being cut down faster than nature can replace them. Forests are also cleared for farming and grazing of livestock. Much of the Midwestern United States has been cleared for livestock as well as farmland. Homes and office buildings have replaced trees along hillsides. Trees and the products of trees have also been used as a source of energy.
Although trees are being cut down and forests are being turned into fields and high rise buildings, is this actually having a detrimental effect? What will the world be like without trees? It has been proven that biological diversity, as well as the environment as a whole, have been negatively affected by deforestation. The problem keeps getting worse; it cannot go away until people take on the responsibility to rectify this worsening problem.
One major concern of biologists is that the loss of forests is causing a mass extinction of species. Edward 0. Wilson warns us, "The extinctions ongoing worldwide, promise to be at least as great as the mass extinction that occurred at the end of the age of dinosaurs" (Tangley, 1987). Deforestation at the hands of loggers, farmers, ranchers, and mining concerns may result in the eradication of one million species by the end of the century (Tangley, 1987). This problem has become so widespread that scientists fear that man is killing o...