Deforestation

• Biodiversity is a measure of how many different species live in an ecosystem
• Human activities like changing land use, deforestation, and peat bog destruction reduce biodiversity
• Deforestation:

  • For thousands of years, humans have been deforesting small areas of woodland for housing or agriculture
  • Increase in human population and industrial machinery has led to clearing much larger areas by large companies for cattle, rice fields, and biofuel crops
  • In the last 75 years, over half of the world's rainforests have been cut down
  • Nearly twenty percent of the Amazon rainforest has been cut down in the last fifty years
  • Deforestation destroys habitats and leads to the extinction of several hundred species daily
• Key fact: In the last 75 years, over half of the world's rainforests have been cut down
• Scientists estimate that deforestation causes the loss of several hundred species of plant, animal, and insect daily, leading to extinctions and reduced biodiversity
• Deforestation destroys habitats of organisms living in the affected areas
• Deforestation leads to the killing of individuals of many species
• Deforestation is causing extinctions and dramatically reducing biodiversity