Deforestation Plot

I really need to stop watching depressing documentaries. The last one I rented was about how horrible Wal Mart is. So boycott it. It's horrible in may ways. To its employees, the surrounding community, and the environment.

Ok, enough of that.
I'll start writing about the environmental plots I mentioned. I'll start with the easiest one first.

Cutting down forests.
Definitely the one you see the most of, though a lot of the details are often absent.
It's definitely a very important topic. And one most people agree on.
We lose thousands of acres of rain forest daily.
Rain forests have some of the highest biodiversity (number of species) in the world. And rain forest species are going extinct at an unprecedented rate. And a lot of these are plant species. The plant species in the rain forests can have a wide range of medicinal values. There's supposedly a mixture that can be made from Amazon plants that will cure diabetes. So, we know that a lot of these plants have medicinal value. But there are countless unidentified species in the rain forest, plenty of which go extinct before we ever discover them. An argument I've heard before is that perhaps one of these plants can cure cancer, but we may never know because it could go extinct before we even discover it.

Why are forests being cleared?
In the old days, it was to make room for the expanding human popluations.
Today you might think it's for logging. And to an extent, that's true. That's definitely true for the old-growth forests in America. There is only a small fraction of old-growth forests left in America, such as redwoods, whose wood is very valuable. The vast majority of American forests was clear-cut long ago and has regrown, though it does not display the characteristics of the ancient forests. The trees are younger, and the complicated network of species hasn't regrown. Many animals require ancient forests to live. Despite the small amount of old-growth forest left, it's still being logged at a frightening rate.
But the reason for deforestation in the rain forests is to make room for agriculture. A lot of crops are grown in areas where rain forests once grew. The problem is that the nutrient content of rain forest soil is very low. So it makes very poor farmland. This probably leads to a huge use of chemical fertilizers. And most of the trees that they clear are simply burned, since it's not economical for them to sell the wood.

Another problem that's often not thought of are the human inhabitants of the forests. These are people that have been living sustainably off of the land for decades or centuries. When the modern world creeps in, it introduces that desire for more. While before they were content to hunt as much as they needed to live, now they'll want to hunt more so they can sell it and make a profit to buy televisions and things they never knew they needed until recently. But just as important is the fact that these ancient cultures are getting snuffed out as modern languages and lifestyles are picked up (Human Planet is a great series about the humans who still live off of the land).

Roads are often the very worst thing for a forest. They let people intrude deep into the wilderness with rifles and saws. They open up areas that were previously inaccessible.

Fragmentation is another big problem. As forests are shrunken down and broken apart by roads and cities, it becomes much harder for animals to move between the remaining pieces of forest. This will make it harder for them to search for food and mates. If you get small enough populations stuck in small enough areas, you'll get in-breeding. It can have a big effect on their gene pool as different populations are cut off from each other.

All of this may seem bad enough. Our forests are disappearing and the animals and plants are dieing off. But it's not as simple as trees getting cut down.
Trees use something called transpiration. Trees need to pull a constant flow of water from their roots up to their leaves. They can't let this flow break. Since the flow of water is constantly happening, the tree brings up much more water than it actually needs. It releases excess water vapor through its leaves. Large forests release so much water this way that it has a significant effect on the local climate. Especially in rain forests. If the number of trees is reduced by a certain amount, there will no longer be enough trees to release enough water into the air. What this means, is that if enough trees are cut down, the climate in the rain-forests will become drier and could destroy what remains of the moisture-loving ecosystem. Evidence of this is already beginning to appear.

You may think that it's easy to tell people to stop cutting down forests. But it's never that simple. People's jobs depend on logging and clear-cutting. The families that set up farms in cleared rain forests use that land to grow food for their families. The fate of a few trees and animals isn't as important to them as the fate of their children. And there's a demand for farmland and timber, or the deforestation wouldn't happen in the first place. It's a deep problem that has to do with humanity's huge consumption rate.

I don't think I really need to explain how you can use this topic. It's been done so often before. It's a pretty simple scenario. People cut down the forests, and the creatures that live in the forest get mad and fight back. You can have all kinds of fun with the creatures you decide to put in the forests. House-sized insects, little orange loraxes, moving trees, or blue people with tails.

Princess Mononoke
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
The Lorax
Fern Gully
Origin: Spirits of the Past
Lord of the Rings
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