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Imagine a marvelous place full of luscious plants and innumerable amounts of species - a place full of marvel and wonder so great it's almost perfect. Such place does exist. It's called the rain forest. Now picture the same place being abused and stripped of it's life. The culprit : man. This is ironic for man is touched in many ways by the rain forest. Preservation of our earth's rain forest is critical to all living things.
The rain forests serve many beneficial roles to humans. Because rain forests contain the earth's greatest diversity of plants and animals, they also represent giant gene banks that can provide new drugs, foods, and other products. Some of the foods that we eat that come from the rain forests are corn, rice, tomatoes, tea, coffee, sugar, chocolate, and many different spices.
Not only is this type of food grown and discovered in the rain forest but meat is also harvested in the rain forest. This also leads to the destruction of the rain forest. Areas of
the rain forest are cleared away for grazing land for cattle. The Wildlife Fact File states that
most of the grazing is done in South America. This serves as a problem because the rain
forest floor can't hold nutrients very long. Once a piece of land, after several years, becomes
over grazed the cattle ranchers must burn another piece of land.
Another beneficial role that the rain forests play to humans is the fact that many of our medicines that we have now come from the rain forest. Cures and medical substances already discovered in rain forests include diogenin, an active agent in contraceptive pills;
reserpine, used to treat cardiac problems; curare, used in heart and lung surgery; The
calabar bean of West Africa for eye disorders; and papay of Latin America for stomach
illness. Only a very small percentage of rain forest plants have thus far been assayed for potential chemical value. Most of the cures are coming from precious rain forest plants that are being destroyed. Medicines from the rain forests can kill germs, reduce fever, lower blood pressure, relax muscles, and treats rashes. Rain Forests are the single most valuable source of plant species that are used to produce medicine. More than 2,000 rain forest plants have been found that contain chemicals that doctors can give to treat deadly cancers in adults. Even the rosy periwinkle in Madagascar is used to help cure leukemia. One type of medicine is so strong that it can cure a kind of leukemia ( cancer of white blood cells ). It is still possible to produce thousands of products made from parts of the rain forest with out destroying the forests themselves (seeds, leaves, flowers, fruits, and sap will keep forming as long as the forest still stands). Wildlife Fact File states that one in ten of the most commonly used medicines are derived from plants of the rain forests and its hard to believe how much we really do depend on the rain forest.
Not only is it beneficial to our nutritional and health related needs but as to our material needs as well. Wood is a very much used substance from the rain forest. These woods are used most often because they are stronger. To meet the demand for mahogany, teak, meranti, walnut, beech, box wood, sapele, melanti, and ebony at least 11 million acres are logged each year to meet the great demands of fuels and housing for the awesome enlargement of the population over the last 100 years. These hardwoods take hundreds of years to mature so they can not be repeatedly replaced . Not only is wood used for furniture and houses it is also used to make charcoal for supply to factories. An estimated 71 million acres of rain forest are being destroyed each year. At this rate, there will be no forest remaining by the year 2035. The Wildlife Fact File states that more than one tenth of the vast Amazonian rain forest has already been destroyed.
Rubber is another material that we depend on. This is used very often in our society. Every day we face the rain forest in many of the products we get from it. When you eat dinner, shop at the mall, water the house plants, or fly in a plane, the rain forests might be touching your life. The rubber tree produces a milky sap, latex, that can be made into a very heat resistant material that is used in the tires of a plane or a car that you may have ridden in. Chemicals in rain forest leaves, flowers, and seeds are used to make cosmetics and perfume that you may have applied earlier. Polishes, soaps, cough drops, chewing gum, tough fibers in ropes and cords, cane furniture, woven baskets, and many shade loving indoor plants are also a part of our daily lives in which these materials came from the rain forest. The list is endless.
Not only does the rain forest play beneficial roles to humans but they also play a great role for the environment. The rain forests hold the earth in its own fragile hands. 35 acres of this delicate ecosystem is destroyed every second. That is the equivalent of 60 football fields every minute or by the year 2035 there will be no rain forests. The destruction is mostly done by burning of the brittle environment. The burning of the rain forest to clear farm land adds millions of tons of carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the air. In the 1990's loss of tropical rain forests alone sent an estimated 2.4 billion tons ( 2.2 metric tons ) of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This could have fill 510 million hot air balloons. Since the rain forests trees are so strong and have trunks much like telephone poles they are prone to be cut down and used for lumber. The rain forests purify and filter the water. They keep the delicate balance of nature by providing oxygen for all animals and the earth's atmosphere. Rain forests absorb a great deal of solar energy. Wildlife Fact File states that if they are destroyed, the earth will likely experience global warming.
Rain forest also protect and regulate the flow and quality of river water. For example, falling rain slowly drips off leaves and branches in the rain forest leaving it to be soaked up into the soil. Plant roots absorb more than half of the rain. Plants return this moisture into the atmosphere through their leaves as vapor. Despite all of this rain the soil is still not wash away. The rain forests help recycle the water over and over again using this process. Some rain forests recieve as much as 300 inches. With out the rain forests that 300 and more inches of water would not be purifyed. Water that is absorbed by plants slowly trickles down to the rivers. Healthy rain forests release steady, clean streams, rather than in muddy bursts that cause destructive floods. They also help lessen the desrtuction of hurricanes by absorbing much of the rain and wind. When we remove the rain forests we also stop the rain forests from preventing environmental problems from protecting natural communities.
Rain forests are the most diverse ecosystems on earth because of the enormous numbers of animal species present. Rain forests cover less than six percent of the earth's total land surface, but they are the home for up to 3/4 of all known species of plants and animals. Most of this animal diversity is made up of insects, but many other invertebrate groups are also represented. A large rain forest region, such as the Amazon Basin, may have more than ten million animal species, although most of these have yet to be described scientifically. It now seems clear that the loss of species is by far the more important concern besides the loss of biodiversity and global warming. So little is yet known about rain forest diversity and ecology that large - scale extinctions could take place as a result of human activities before anything can be done to understand the consequences of such extinctions and prevent them from happening.
More importantly, the earth's atmosphere is sustained by the oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange that takes place when plants convert sunlight into energy. The rain forest, with its many plants, plays a major role. As the rain forest is burned, millions of tons of carbon dioxide are released into the air. This upsets the balance of atmospheric gases and contributes to global warming - known as the green house effect. The continued destruction
of the rain forests will not only kill plants and animals, but will adversely affect our whole
environment.
Over the past 100 years the number of people has gotten larger. There has been more and more demand for food, houses, clothing, furniture, medicine, electricity, and fuels. The people in the tropics weren't as rich as the people in the north. So they turned their forest land as the Europeans and Americans had done before them. First at a slow farms, cattle ranches, logging camps, mines, and oil drills replaced beetles, bats, birds and butterflies feeding. The rain forests no longer sheltered the 6.9 million Indians pace then faster and faster they began to cut down the forest for our needs. Before long, that later dropped to 200,000. This destruction disrupts the Indians culture. For 100's of years, natives have lived in the rain forest without destroying the fragile ecosystems. Now that the Europeans and Americans have changed their ways and have forced the destruction of the rain forests on them, their cultures and many animals face the danger of extinction.
Our rain forests need to be saved because all living organisms and ecosystems depend on the rain forests fertile materials. No single person or society has the right to determine the life or death of a planet. Our society seems to represent that single person and it's not fair to a resource that is so valuable. Rain forests mean so much more than just beautiful scenery and animals. It's a global protector. Rain forests are vital in controlling the earth's climate, producing a large quantity of the oxygen we need to survive, and they are the single most valuable source of plant species that are to produce medicine. We can't lose this area of such a great biodiversity. Loss of our rain forest would mean the extinction of plant and animal species that are native to these habitats. The full effect of life without our rain forests is speculation, at this point; no one really knows what will happen if they are gone. The good of many people should always supersede the good of just a few people. We need to stick together.
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