What Is Deforestation? Causes, Consequences

What Is Deforestation?

Deforestation refers to the decrease in forest areas across the world that are lost for other uses such as agricultural croplands, urbanization, or mining activities. Greatly accelerated by human activities since around 1960, deforestation has been badly affecting natural ecosystems and the climate. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates the annual rate of deforestation to be around 1.3 million km squared per decade.

The Causes of Deforestation: Why Is Deforestation Happening?

Multiple factors, either of human or natural origin, cause deforestation. Natural factors include natural forest fires or parasite-caused diseases which can result in deforestation. Nevertheless, human activities are among the main causes of global deforestation. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, the expansion of agriculture caused nearly 80% of global deforestation, with the construction of infrastructures such as roads or dams, together with mining activities and urbanization, making up the remaining causes of deforestation.

 

Agriculture is the Number 1 Cause of Deforestation (80%)

Why is deforestation happening? According to the FAO, agriculture causes around 80% of deforestation. And how does agriculture cause so much deforestation? According to the same report, 33% of agriculture-caused deforestation is a consequence of subsistence agriculture – such as local peasant agriculture in developing countries

 

Commercial or industrial agriculture (field crops and livestock) cause around 40% of forest loss – in the search for space to grow food, fibers, or biofuel. It is also particularly interesting to note livestock is believed to be responsible for about 14% of global deforestation. The main reasons why have to do with the large areas require both to raise livestock but also to grow its soy-based food.

How wolves changed rivers

In 1995 wolves were sent to  Yellowstone National Park after being captured in Canada to try and get some wolves to breed. They just appeared as they traveled. The numbers of deer in the park had risen incredibly fast as there was nothing to hunt them. So the deers grazed and they grazed some more. So most of the vegetation had gone from the park. However, when the wolves came back they started to kill the deer which kept them away from certain places such as the valleys and the gorges.

And so those places immediately started to regenerate. The height of the trees quintupled in just six years. Bare valley sides quickly became forests, and as soon as that happened the birds started moving in. The number of beavers greatly increased because they ate trees. And the beavers were engineers and what they did is they created niches for other creatures. And the dams they built in the rivers provided habitats for otters, ducks, muskrats, fish, reptiles, and amphibians.

The wolves killed coyotes and as a result of that, the number of rabbits and mice began to rise, which meant more hawks, more weasels. More foxes, more badgers. Ravens and bald eagles came down to feed on the wolves' leftovers, and bears fell on it too so their population began to rise, partly too because of the growing number of berries on the regenerating shrubs. And then the bears had enough strength to hunt the deer and reinforce the wolves.

However, the rivers were going into straighter lines staying in place and not eroding as much anymore, More permanent pools formed. The rivers changed because of wolves. The reason was that the regenerating forest stabilized the banks so that they collapsed less often so that the rivers became more fixed in their course. And because of the regenerated vegetation on the valley sides, there was less soil erosion because the vegetation stabilized that as well. However now you can see the chain reaction, every time we chop down a tree animals are driven away.

 

So now you can see what chopping down a tree does to a natural ecosystem. It makes everything unstable. So I believe that if we can avoid chopping down entire forests or doing it in a safer way we can save ecosystems.