Today, more than half of Earth's original rainforests have all been destroyed, victims of unsustainable agriculture, ranching, logging, mining and other destructive practices. These stresses have increased enormously in the last 50 years alone.
Every year, 50 million acres -- an area the size of England, Wales and Scotland combined -- are cut down. Primary rainforests in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Haiti have been lost entirely, with the Ivory Coast fast approaching the same fate.
Every second of every day, a slice of rainforest the size of a football field is mowed down. That's 86,400 football fields of rainforest per day, or over 31 million football fields of rainforest lost each year.
In places where The Nature Conservancy works, the threat to rainforests is all too clear.
Threats to Rainforests:
- Threat: Less than seven percent remains of Brazil's Atlantic Forest which once covered 330 million acres. Expanding urban areas, increased agricultural and industrial development threaten this rich, fragile forest and in so doing threaten the well-being of the surrounding communities that rely on the forest for their economic prosperity and livelihoods.
- Threat: Along the green, rolling hills of Chile's Valdivian Coastal Range, highway construction, overharvesting native trees for firewood and unsustainable logging threaten to tear this unique forest apart. With the loss of the forest -- the former home of the indigenous Mapuche people -- Chile will lose an important part of its cultural heritage.
- Threat: Deep within the mist-shrouded trees and sparkling waters of Indonesia's East Kalimantan forests, unsustainable and illegal logging destroy the precious forest ecosystem and disrupt the lives of the surrounding local people.
- Threat: In South America's Amazon Rainforest, ranchers are turning forests into pastures and roads are slicing through dense tropical trees. This deforestation destroys the tremendous biological diversity just waiting to be discovered as well as the valuable resources we rely on from the Amazon like important medicines that treat cancer patients.
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Comments: 18
Instead of fear and threats what are the direct solutions to the problem?
We as human kind must make a decision in mass or we will surely go the way of the mighty reptiles that once ruled the surface of this Earth.
We now have the ability to communicate directly with a higher life form, but like everything in life it is a contest and will we make it in time.
The story about the flea on the elephant illustrates our challenge.
Lets stop with the fear and the information of doom, but deal with constructual approache's.
It begins with one then like a virus it will spread.
Instead of us all dying by our toxic waste products.
Our large numbers of greedy people on such a fragile life form as our Mother Earth.
She always retains the ultimate say so in what will happen.
She remains vigilantl and open to her children that sincerely want to know her.
Either you are a part of the solution or you are part of the problem......
The threat from the loss of the Rainforests are long-term. The threat from Hanford is now. People are not interested in things that require attention, time, and inconvenience.
It will be interesting to see if anyone who reads the words "Hanford Nuclear Reservation" in this post will bother to find out what it is.
As far as I know, there never has been anything that all human beings or even a majority of them have agreed upon, although gradually over time we have come to adopt women's suffrage and even agreement that we are changing the world's climate. But we haven't had much practice in global human agreement, nor have we ever had world leaders who have made that a priority.
In thinking about this need to teach ourselves how to seek agreement, I had a dream awhile back that if we could ever find one thing simple enough to agree on, that it might lead to more. My idea then was that we discard our grammar rules which call for only capitalizing the word "Earth" when it is part of a list of the planets, and capitalize it all the time to indicate that it is at least as important as other things we routinely capitalize like towns and states and days of the week. When I launched this idea to friends, I got very little interest and even a fair amount of resistance. Maybe I just picked the wrong issue, but I agree with Joel that we must find a way to learn to agree on doing something, or those of us with the energy to do something right will founder in despair. Does anyone have an idea for something simple enough for us all to try agreeing on?
We as a whole may have to change our ways but that is a lot better than oblivion.
It is well within the powers of the governments of the world to impose a rule that four saplings be planted for each tree cut for commercial purposes. Incentives can be given to big commercial houses to adopt and develop acres of forests.
Basically the human race, while gaining control over nature, should also learn to make frugal use of its limited resources. Even if we had a bigger earth and vaster resources we would have populated it to the brink, mindlessly used those resources and still would have invited a situation of scarcity. Unless we subject ourselves to voluntary control the nature will eventually force its will on us and find its balance but not without inflicting untold misery and pain on us.
How many people know that the "Hanford Nuclear Reservation" is where nuclear waste from weapons production is stored ?
Hanford is located 400 yards from the Columbia River and contains 177 very large tanks of very, very deadly liquid nuclear waste. Some of these tanks are over fifty years old. Older tanks have begun to leak. The leakage is headed toward the Columbia River in the ground water.
From Hanford Watch
http://www.hanfordwatch.org/
" The Hanford Nuclear Reservation is the largest nuclear waste dump in the Western Hemisphere and a major Northwest environmental issue. It is a serious long-term threat to the Columbia River, which Oregon depends on for power generation, farm irrigation, fishing, transport and recreation.
Hanford covers 560 square miles of desert in eastern Washington, along 51 miles of the Columbia River. It is 35 miles north of the Oregon border, and 215 miles upstream from Portland."
177 tanks of nuclear waste covering 560 square miles! One cup full of this waste is strong enough to kill "a room full of people". Some of these tanks are leaking. The government is considering cutting the funding for the clean up project.
This from " 60 Minutes" last Sunday
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/27/60minutes/main1553896.shtml
" It is contaminated by waste left over from the production of nuclear weapons. There are 53 million gallons of highly radioactive liquid waste stored in underground tanks that are now so old they have leaked one million gallons of the stuff. "
This Is not a new story Google " Hanford Nuclear Reservation" you'll get over 100,000 hits.
The point is, this is a story that has been developing within our borders for decades and, in general, nobody knows about it, or, quite frankly, cares about it.
If we can't summon up the gumption to hold our own govermnet accountable (remember funding cuts are being considered) for cleaning up 560 square miles of liquid nuclear waste, some of which is already in the ground water around the facility, how are we going to whip the populace into a force that will stop the distruction of the Rain Forest ?
For the record I am pro-rain Forest, but I believe the best chance for saving the Rain Forest will have to come from those outside the U.S. borders.
" Some of it leaked into the groundwater, and it's heading right for the river. With a million people downstream, there's a sense of urgency about cleaning up the site, which is huge. It takes up 586 square miles in southeastern Washington"- 60 Minutes
Going into the Condor Bioreserve in a couple of days. Will try to post an article in the travel writing section once I get back. For now, all I can say is that the country is beautiful, the air is clean, and the people are wonderful.
I´ve seen some of the protected areas in Ecuador and please know that your conservation efforts are positive, productive, and have a real impact to the people, wildlife, and landscapes of Ecuador. Muchas gracias!
We stayed and worked at the Hacienda Guachalá just outside of Cayambe. I highly recommend it, should you find yourself in the area!