The loss of animal and plant species due to habitat loss is one of the most harmful and distressing outcomes of deforestation. Forests are home to 70% of all land animals and plant species. Deforestation endangers not only known species, but also unknown species.
The rainforest trees that provide shelter for some animals also create a temperature-regulating canopy. Deforestation causes a more extreme temperature difference between day and night, similar to a desert, which could be lethal for many residents.
As a result, the loss of biological and genetic diversity that occurs as a result of deforestation and logging forest is the most serious conservation impact. In addition to causing habitat loss, a lack of trees allows for a larger release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. In fact, forests that are healthy absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and operate as excellent carbon sinks. Deforested areas lose this ability, releasing more carbon into the atmosphere.
Plants and animals perish as the forest disappears. A typical 1000-hectare stretch of tropical moist forest has up to 1,500 species of blooming plants, 750 tree species, 400 bird species, 150 butterfly species, 100 reptile species, and 60 amphibian species, with the insects being too numerous to enumerate.
Clearing them could result in the loss of a million or more species in the twenty-first century. Even the extinction of one species has a negative impact on humanity as a whole, as it is a storehouse of genetic material. Since crops and investment were first developed from the wild, all civilization has been based on diversity, and we are still reliant on it for food, medicine, and industrial raw materials. For example, half of all medicine offered worldwide is derived from wild products, and the National Cancer Institute of the United States has identified over 2000 tropical rainforest plants with cancer-fighting potential. Even for a possible remedy for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (Aids), miracles await discovery in the rainforest.
So, why are they being annihilated on a daily basis?
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References
- Logging and its impact on forest as a life source – https://www.fao.org/3/xii/0751-b1.htm
- Effects of Deforestation – https://www.pachamama.org/effects-of-deforestation