The Destruction of Tropical Forests
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The destruction of tropical forests has long been a source of alarm to professional ecologists and environmental activists, and increasingly it has become a matter of public concern in Western industrial nations. Citizens of industrialized nations often respond to the issue of tropical deforestation as if they are teaching backward people how to cope with their ecosystem. One reason for this attitude is the perception that deforestation is the result of innumerable individual decisions that are rational on a small scale (e.g., subsistence farming, ranching, or lumbering for profit) but that have consequences that are irrational on the large scale (e.g., alteration of hydrological patterns, effects on global climate, or reduction of biodiversity). The basic problem of tropical deforestation is seen in the fact that habitat destruction in the tropical rain forests is proceeding at an average annual rate of 100,000 200,000 square kilometers, an area the size of England. Precisely what is disappearing is a matter of argument, and that is part of the problem. The tropics contain a disproportionate share of the world's species of plants and animals, many of them endemic to tiny habitats. Above and beyond the species they comprise, tropical forest habitats offer several classes of local and global values: hydrological, in preventing soil erosion and downstream siltation, and climatological, in maintaining local precipitation and the atmospheric balance of gases.
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remaining tropical forest area, 7 percent of all plant species will probably go extinct by the end of the century at current rates.
The extinction of animal and plant species might be considered a tragedy in itself, but there is additional concern that the loss of some species may also mean the loss of important medical knowledge and cures for disease. recent work in biology shows that the vast majority of species on Earth await discovery. Scientists have identified some 1.4 million species of organisms so far, though some estimate that there are as many as 50 million species in the world. even if that figure is exaggerated, it is certain that most species remain unidentified and unclassified. Biodiversity is considered one of our most important assets, and the diversity in the rainforests holds out hope for considerable knowledge if the species found only there are protected for study. If we destroy these unknown species, we also destroy information. There is no way for us to know how valuable that information may be.
Even partial destruction of the rainforests can be devastating. Tropical rainforests may well be the most diverse ecosystems on the planet, and though they cover less than 7 percent of the earth's land mas
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Approximate Word count = 1526
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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