Essay On Tropical Rainforests

Tropical Rainforest Damage Tropical rainforests are home to over half the world 's species such as butterflies, spiders, worms, snakes, frogs, parrots, sloths, and jaguars. There’s three levels of the rainforest; the forest floor where plants don’t grow because there is almost no sunlight. Understory layer where little sunshine reaches this area so the plants need to have big leaves to capture sunlight. Canopy layer where most of the trees have oval leaves that are pointy. Then the tallest trees are the emergents, which are over 200 feet above the forest floor. The rainforests provided our human ancestors with a supply of animals, food, and plants. Major trade routes, company empires, developed to control the resources from the forests. Deforestation …show more content…
The cattle’s meat supplies to many places like Russia, North America, and China. ”It is estimated that for each pound of beef produced, 200 square feet of rainforest is destroyed.” Costa Rica has been losing most of their forests because of the cattle farms for 20 years. The Indians have also used the slash and burn farming methods, but on a much smaller scale. What they did was that they would use a small area of land and used it themselves to obtain any wood, food, water. Then after they were finished, they would go to a different area and use that so the land they already used can regenerate. So since the area that was used and cleared was small the soil won’t dry up and eventually the forest clearance will be temporary, which is different than now because it is permanent. The “now” slash and burn methods destroy huge chunks of land to be cleared away, and this technique estimated to be 50% of all rainforest destruction. The sad fact is that since its large areas the soil quickly becomes poor quality and very dried up. About 80% of the rainforests nutrients and vitamins come from the trees and plants, so about 20% of the nutrients and minerals are in the soil. That’s why when the trees are exposed the soil will change very quickly, and then the soil will dry up and causes erosion. So cattle farmers have to destroy more rainforest so that they can make new cattle …show more content…
Timber companies would cut down huge trees like the mahogany, and then would sell the wood to other countries to build boats, furniture, or other household items. When people cut down the rainforest only valuable trees get collected and shipped off, but the other trees would be selected for wood chipping. There are animals who use the trees as food and shelter, so when the trees are cut down many of them die or will escape and that leads to the animals having nowhere to retreat. So there are poachers to hunt down those exotic creatures and get them out of the way, but there’s so much hunting that most of them are on the edge of