 |
| October 2011 |
| Billie Silvey |
 |
| Deforestation |
 |
| In the early days, the United States was covered with virgin forests and deep, luxurious grasslands full of living creatures. But the demand for food and housing led people to cut down the forests, plow under the prairie grasslands and hunt the animals to near extinction. The demand for fuel and other natural resources led to mining and drilling and the further destruction of the beauty and mystery of our own land.
The same thing is happening today in the Amazon. Once a vast sea of tropical forest, the Amazon rainforest is now scarred by roads, farms, ranches and dams. Over 2.7 million acres of forests are burned and cut down each year. Today, more than 20 percent of the Amazon rainforest is gone forever. The land is cleared to log timber, create large-scale cattle ranches, mines, roads and hydroelectric plants. While some is used for subsistence farming, other parts are burned to provide charcoal to power industrial plants. Most of this destruction ends up doing just one thing--enriching large corporations. We can understand it, but we can hope--for our sakes and the sakes of the peoples who live there--that the destruction slows and becomes educated use not exploitation, wise and careful stewardship not destruction for profit. As important as the Amazon is to the planet, we shouldn't see it, as we did our own country, as a place of wealth to be squandered, but as a place of wonderful potential that may never be realized if we don't slow the devastation. Deforestation pollutes the air and water, erodes the soil, increases malaria epidemics, releases carbon dioxide and destroys indigenous populations, plants and animals. Scientists estimate that we are destroying more than 137 species of plants and animals each day. |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Logging
Most of the forest is lost to commercial logging. Our appetite for tropical hardwoods is immense, but we also destroy rainforests for cardboard packaging, woodchips, paper and charcoal for fuel. Logging concessions are sold for as little as $2 an acre. Once an acre has been logged, it can never become what it was before. The intricate ecosystem is lost forever. Plants that grow in the dark humid environment below the canopy can't live in the open, so they and the animals that depend on them become extinct. Rain quickly erodes thin topsoil that is no longer protected by the canopy. |
| Subsistence Farming |
| Grazing
Our demand for cheap beef causes rainforests to be destroyed to provide grazing land. To graze a steer in Amazonia requires two full acres. A single cattle operation in Brazil that was co-owned by a British bank and one of Brazil's wealthiest families destroyed almost 500,000 acres of rainforest. It never made a profit, but government write-offs sheltered huge logging profits on other land owned by the same investors. The forest is seen as an economic engine to drive national economies rather than the priceless resource that it is. |
| Oil |
| Indigenous people who slash and burn trees to clear land to feed themselves and their families don't represent the levels of destruction corporate clearing does, but that's how we started in this country, and all too quickly one thing led to another. Teaching sustainable farming methods can save valuable rainforests. |
| Saving the Rainforest |
| The Amistad, a river boat run by the Smithsonian Institute, is used for ecotourism, training people to appreciate and care for the environment while making very limited impact on it. Bioprospecting is another method of helping preserve the Amazon. A confederacy of plant collectors, anthropologists, ecologists, conservationists, natural product companies, nutritional supplements manufacturers, AIDS and cancer researchers and drug companies work together to discover the secrets of the rainforests. Most plant-derived drugs were discovered by examining the use indigenous peoples made of local plants. If they are allowed to benefit from their discoveries rather than all the profits going to drug companies, the rainforest could be saved. Rainforests converted to cattle operations yield $60 an acre. If timber is harvested, an acre is worth $400. But if medicine, nuts, fruit, rubber, chocolate and other renewable resources are harvested, the land yields $2,400 an acre, not just now but for succeeding generations. Let's encourage sustainable use of this God-given area of wonder, worth and beauty. |
| The western Amazon is being threatened by untapped oil and gas reserves that the national governments of Ecuador and Pero are leasing to state and multinational energy companies. Impacts include deforestation to create access roads, drilling platforms and pipelines, contamination from previous operations, oil spills and seismic testing activities. |