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News articles on Deforestation

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Mongabay.com news articles on deforestation in blog format. Updated regularly.

Human Threats to Rainforests - Cattle Pastures
(3/1/2005) The majority of the commercial destruction in the Amazon Basin from the 1960s to early 1990s was not due to logging or mining, but to cattle ranchers and land speculators who burned huge tracts of rainforest before planting the areas with African grasses for pasture. In Brazil, government figures attributed 38 percent of deforestation from 1966-1975 to large-scale cattle ranching. Cattle ranching has been even more widespread in parts of Central America, led by Costa Rica, which has one of the worst deforestation rates in Latin America. During the 1970s and early 1980s, stretches of rainforest were burned and converted into cattle pasture lands to meet American demand for beef.


Human Threats to Rainforests - Debt
(3/1/2005) In the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, debt was driving commercial deforestation in some developing tropical countries. Strapped for cash, these countries turned toward their natural resources as the fastest and easiest way to service debt and interest payments. Readily available without capital investment or skilled labor, often non-renewable, forest products like mineral wealth, timber, oil, and hydroelectric power were liquidated in an effort to raise much-needed funds.


Fires in the Rainforest
(3/1/2005) Today most rainforest fires originate in nearby pasturelands and agricultural fields where fires are used for land clearing and crop maintenance. Every year, during the burning season, tens of thousands of fires are set by land speculators, ranchers, plantation owners, and poor farmers to clear bush and forest. Under dry conditions these agricultural forests can easily spread into neighboring rainforest.


The Impact Oil Production in the Rainforest
(3/1/2005) The extraction of oil is responsible for the deforestation, degradation, and destruction of lands across the globe. The oil extraction process results in the release of toxic drilling by-products into local rivers, while broken pipelines and leakage result in persistent oil spillage. In addition, the construction of roads for accessing remote oil sites opens wild lands to colonists and land developers.


Logging in the Rainforest
(3/1/2005) Logging is one of the most prominent and best-known forms of rainforest degradation and destruction. Despite improved logging techniques and greater international awareness and concern for the rainforests, unsustainable logging of tropical rainforests continues--much of it practiced illegally by criminal syndicates.


Human Threats to Rainforests - Consumption, Conclusion
(3/1/2005) Misdirected consumption in wealthier countries contributes to rainforest destruction in tropical countries. For example, during the 1970s and 1980s American demand for cheap beef triggered the clearing of vast stretches of rainforest in Central America and Brazil. Similarly demand for certain forest products like tropical hardwoods and inexpensive particle board gives impetus for companies to exploit forest stocks. Japan converts thousands of acres of tropical rainforest every year into wood framing for cement blocks (discarded after the cement dries) and chopsticks. The cultivation of cassava in Thailand for European cattle feed increased more than ten-fold from 1965 to the mid-1980s, causing extensive deforestation in northeastern Thailand.


Impact of Population and Poverty on Rainforests
(3/1/2005) The ultimate driving force behind all deforestation is human overpopulation; both the population in the temperate region that places demands on the resources derived from the tropical rainforests, and the expanding population of developing tropical nations, who exploit the rainforest for survival. Today the world's population stands at approximately 6,490,000,000 (6.49 billion) people. Each minute another 145 people are added to the planet, each day another 208,000, and each year another 76,000,000. Despite declining global birth rates, which have now fallen to the lowest level in recorded history, the U.S. Bureau of the Census projects the population will reach 8 billion by 2026 and expects the population to then level off at 9.1 billion in 2050, barring an outbreak of a widespread deadly plague or a catastrophic environmental disaster. Over 99 percent of this new growth will occur in the less-developed countries of today..


Human Threats to Rainforests - Economic Restructuring
(3/1/2005) In recent years economic globalization has brought about profound changes in countries around the world. Generally there has been a trend of decentralizing government and reducing the role that government plays in the everyday life of its citizens. In developing countries, this shift has put a greater strain on forest resources which have customarily been treated as state property. Whether determined by a market economy or dictated by a command economy, management of forest land has been the responsibility of public forest services. Forest exploitation firms have dealt through these bureaucracies, which generally ensure some sort of control over the allocation of forest lands.


Impact of Deforestation - Atmospheric Role of Forests
(3/1/2005) Rainforests play the important role of locking up atmospheric carbon in their vegetation via photosynthesis. The vegetation and soils of the world's forests contain about 125 percent of the carbon found in the atmosphere. When forests are burned, degraded, or cleared, the opposite effect occurs: large amounts of carbon are released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide along with other greenhouse gases (nitrous oxide, methane, and other nitrogen oxides). The burning of forests releases about two billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, or about 22 percent of anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide.


Impact of Deforestation - Local and National Effects
(3/1/2005) The local level is where deforestation has the most immediate effect. With forest loss, the local community loses the system that performed valuable but often underappreciated services like ensuring the regular flow of clean water and protecting the community from flood and drought. The forest acts as a sort of sponge, soaking up rainfall brought by tropical storms while anchoring soils and releasing water at regular intervals. This regulating feature of tropical rainforests can help moderate destructive flood and drought cycles that can occur when forests are cleared.


Human Threats to Rainforests - Fuelwood, Roads, Climate
(3/1/2005) FAO estimates that 40 percent of the world (2.6 billion people) rely on fuelwood or charcoal as their primary source of energy for cooking and heating. Fuelwood consumption has increased 250 percent since 1960 (the world's population only increased by 90 percent since 1960).


Impact of Deforestation - Species Loss, Extinction, and Disease
(3/1/2005) A fully functioning forest has a great capacity to regenerate. Exhaustive hunting of tropical rainforest species can reduce those species necessary to forest continuance and regeneration. For example, in Central Africa, the loss of species like gorillas, chimps, and elephants reduces the ability of seed dispersal and slows the recovery of damaged forest. Loss of habitat in the tropics also affects the regeneration of temperate species. North American migratory birds, important seed dispersers of temperate species, declined 1-3 percent annually from 1978-1988..


Forces Behind the Loss of Tropical Rainforests
(3/1/2005) As the first seven sections of this site have described, tropical rainforests are incredibly rich ecosystems that play a fundamental role in the basic functioning of the planet. Rainforests are home to probably 50 percent of the world's species, making them an extensive library of biological and genetic resources. In addition, rainforests help maintain the climate by regulating atmospheric gases and stabilizing rainfall, protect against desertification, and provide numerous other ecological functions.


Natural Threats to Rainforests
(3/1/2005) Throughout their existence, tropical rainforests have been affected by natural forces like fire, drought, and storms. These events occur on a random basis and can damage large stretches of rainforest. However, the damage caused by these natural occurrences is generally different from that caused by human activities; namely in that the forest loss is not complete and parts of the ecosystem continue to function. From the surviving remnants of the ecosystem, the forest can usually rapidly regenerate. Within a few years, the forest diversity can return to or exceed the diversity that existed before the disturbance. Some studies have suggested that these periodic occurrences are an important ingredient to a forest's diversity. Without these events, scientists believe, some forests cannot reach their fully dynamic state. Researches have found that forest turnover rates may be as short as 65-135 years..


Human Threats to Rainforests - Intro
(3/1/2005) The greatest cause of tropical rainforest destruction today comes from human activities, which, unlike natural damage, are unrelenting and extremely thorough. Although much of this deforestation is driven by national and international economic forces, the majority serves no long-term purpose; it results from subsistence activities on a local level. Many of the effects from human-induced destruction of the rainforests are probably irreversible within our time..


Human Threats to Rainforests - War
(3/1/2005) War can be a blessing in disguise or a curse to the rainforest, depending on the course of events that surrounds the war, and the situation before the outbreak of the war.


Global Consequences of Deforestation in the Tropics
(3/1/2005) Rainforests around the world still continue to fall. Does it really make a difference? Why should anyone care if some plants, animals, mushrooms, and microorganisms perish? Rainforests are often hot and humid, difficult to reach, insect-ridden, and have elusive wildlife.


Impact of Deforestation - Loss of Renewable Resources, Wildlife Conflict
(3/1/2005) Deforestation can rob a country of potential renewable revenues while replacing valuable productive lands with virtually useless scrub and grassland. Tropical forests provide important renewable resources that can significantly contribute to national economic growth on a continuing basis..


Global Impact of Deforestation - Climatic Role of Forests
(3/1/2005) Tropical rainforests play a vital role in the functioning of the planet's natural systems. The forests regulate local and global weather through their absorption and creation of rainfall and their exchange of atmospheric gases. For example, the Amazon alone creates 50-80 percent of its own rainfall through transpiration. Cutting the rainforests changes the reflectivity of the earth's surface, which affects global weather by altering wind and ocean current patterns, and changes rainfall distribution. If the forests continue to be destroyed, global weather patterns may become more unstable and extreme.



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