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Rain Forests All the Way The discussions these days are why are the rain
forests depleting? Well this research will help change the opinions of many
people. Some facts about rain forests are, “Tropical rain forests occupy about 7
percent of the earth’s surface but harbor as much as 50 percent of the world’s
plant and animal species. Also about 57 percent of all rain forests remaining
are in the tropics in the Western Hemisphere: 30 percent are in Brazil. At the
current rate of deforestation, tropical rain forests could be wiped out in 177
years. Less than 5 percent of the world’s tropical rain forests are protected
within national parks and reserves (Steve Grant, 2)”. Rain forests are becoming
very scarce and should be taking into concern because depletion of rain forests
is a problem. One method of cutting down rain forests is slash-and-burn
agriculture. Grant defines slash-and-burn agriculture as “Smallholders that are
cutting down four or five acres of forest and set it on fire. The resulting ash
fertilizes the soils, which are notoriously poor in the tropics (1)”. Grant
explains that now that there is only charred stumps left, a lot of light reaches
the ground and is oppressively hot (1). “In the past, a logger might take only a
few trees per acre.
While that would allow more light into the forest floor and
raise the risk of fire (Grant, 2)”. So when people decide to cut down forests
they are increasing the risk of fire. Rain forests have been burning up lately.
An analysis of satellite by the EDF indicates that burning of rainforest land in
Amazon increased 28% from 1996 to 1997 (Amazon rainforest, 1). Research shows “A
total of 19,115 fires are reported from the NOAA-12 satellite images in the
sample in 1996, while 24,549 fires appear in the 1997 data over the period (1)”.
One reason for rampant burning is that Brazil’s environmental agency has had no
legal authority to enforce environmental law since 1989. A bill in the Brazilian
congress that would close the loophole passed the Senate earlier this year, but
has been blocked by special interests in the Lower House (2). So of the reasons
why the burning continues is because of the government and the burning is
increasing more and more because we need more land and crops. Since the
statistics show that rain forest are getting burned up, the government and
people need to start taking concern towards the rain forest. The point of this
paper was to persuade people as a whole to take rain forest into concern and act
on it. Some solutions to the problem are that the government should take better
responsibility and take control of the burning of the rain forest. Also the
people can help the government out by understanding the needs of our rain
forest.
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