How the lives of animals and humans are affected by deforestation
The rain forest is home to about 80 percent of the world’s known animal and plant species. Unfortunately, many of the rain forest is being taken away by humans and natural means. This can have a devastating effect on the inhabitants of this area.
Changes in the environment and loss of habitat can make it difficult for some species to survive or even thrive. Due to this factor many animal groups end up on the endangered list or if it is an extreme cause they could go extinct.
Every year an area of the rain forest, the size of new jersey, is cut down and destroyed. The creatures living in these spaces either die or are forced to find a new place called home. Humans are destroying the rain forest without thinking about the animals lives they are hurting.
The forest is cut down for wood supply to make fire, agricultural use (small and large farms), land for poor farmers that have nowhere else to go, grazing land for cattle, pulp for making paper, road construction, and the extraction of minerals and energy.
Another threat to the rain forest is climate change, this is most found in the amazon and parts of southeast Asia. These parts are suffering from serious drought, which causes the trees to die-out and it dries out the possibility for the leaf litter to spread. Because of this we now see an increase risk of forest fires, but the forest fires are not always caused by nature. They are mainly started by land developers, ranchers, plantation owners, and loggers.
In 2005–2010, the amazon experienced the worst drought ever recorded. Rivers dried up, isolation certain communities, and millions of acres of the rain forest burned down. The smoke from this fire cause widespread health problems for many people within the vicinity.
People also had trouble with transportation and the smoke was so thick that it even caused rain clouds the be blocked off. This distributed huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, making the climate change worse.
Huge amounts of the amazons tallest trees that make the upper region of the rain forest, the “canopy”, died off because of the drought. Without these trees to block the sun from the rest of the forest, it caused further damage to the lower layers of the rain forest.
Canopy of the amazon
Global warming has a huge effect on the rain forest with changes in weather patterns, rainfall distribution, and temperature will result in changes of the rain forests environment. Reduced rainfall can result in the trees dying off and a depletion of water sources for the surrounding animals.
When an area of the forest is bare and dried out it can easily be caught on fire by lightning, this is where the changes in weather patterns is found. Temperature is a major factor in the endangerment of certain species. It can either get too hot or too cold for a species to survive.
Some examples of endangered animals are Bonobo (Democratic Republic of Congo), Bornean Orangutan (Indonesia, Malaysia), Common Chimpanzee (Eastern and Central Africa),Golden Poison Frog (Colombia),Hyacinth Macaw (South America),and the Great Green Macaw (Central America)
Golden Poison Frog (Colombia)
Hannah H.
