Why are rainforests being destroyed? (2024)

FAQs

Why are rainforests being destroyed? ›

Huge areas of rainforest are destroyed by clearing for farming, timber, roads, hydropower dams, mining, house-building or other development. The problem is it's often seen as more economically worthwhile to cut the forest down than to keep it standing.

Direct human causes of deforestation include logging, agriculture, cattle ranching, mining, oil extraction and dam-building.

The primary causes of forest degradation are logging activities, livestock grazing, and the construction of roads. Deforestation is a particular concern in tropical rain forests because these forests are home to much of the world's biodiversity.

A: An average of 137 species of life forms are driven into extinction every day in the world's tropical rainforests. The forces of destruction such as logging, cattle ranching have all contributed to the loss of millions of acres of tropical rainforest. Animals and people alike lose their homes when trees are cut down.

Logging interests cut down rain forest trees for timber used in flooring, furniture, and other items. Power plants and other industries cut and burn trees to generate electricity. The paper industry turns huge tracts of rain forest trees into pulp. The cattle industry uses slash-and-burn techniques to clear ranch land.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere crashed to one of its all time global lows in the Pennsylvanian and early Permian. As the climate aridified through the Late Paleozoic, rainforests were eventually replaced by seasonally dry biomes.

No more rainforest

With the current rate of deforestation, the world's rainforests will be gone by 2100. The rainforest is home to more than half of all species on Earth.

Huge areas of rainforest are destroyed by clearing for farming, timber, roads, hydropower dams, mining, house-building or other development. The problem is it's often seen as more economically worthwhile to cut the forest down than to keep it standing. We're working hard to change that perception.

Many of them are still blazing. Real-time satellite monitoring shows that so far in 2024, more than 10,000 wildfires have ripped across 11,000 square kilometers of the Amazon, across multiple countries.

What would happen if Amazon was destroyed? ›

Destroying the Amazon rainforest would mean losing a biodiversity hotspot. Its absence would lead to increased carbon in the air and oceans, the loss of medically and culturally significant species, and worsening drought and flooding.

Today their logging yards, cattle enclosures and soy farms sit on the fringes of a vanishing forest. Powered by murky sources of capital and rising demand for beef, a violent and corrupt frontier is now pushing into indigenous land, national parks and one of the most preserved parts of the jungle.

Biodiversity loss from habitat destruction is often driven by land grabbing and industrialized agricultural expansion, mining, logging, and large-scale infrastructure development, usually through deforestation.

Huge areas of rainforest are destroyed by clearing for farming, timber, roads, hydropower dams, mining, house-building or other development. The problem is it's often seen as more economically worthwhile to cut the forest down than to keep it standing.