Introduction:
Illegal logging occurs throughout every region of the Earth whether a vulnerable region such as the smaller countries in the Amazon Basin, Southeast Asia, or Central Africa along with more developed areas such as North America, the Russian Frontier, and Europe.
Illegal logging is defined as harvesting, transporting, purchasing, or selling timber in violation of national law. Illegal logging includes collecting woods that are located in protected areas, distributing threatened plant species to include trees, and even falsifying official documents. Even though there was no definite start date to illegal logging, the concept is inferred to be as old as logging itself, because of the deeply imbedded roots illegal logging has had in the deforestation ecosystems around the globe. Illegal logging occurs throughout every region of the Earth whether a vulnerable region such as the smaller countries in the Amazon Basin, Southeast Asia, or Central Africa along with more developed areas such as North America, the Russian Frontier, and Europe.
With the illegal production’s steady growth rate, the Earth‘s biodiversity has become a victim of widespread damage and ruin. “Illegal logging destroys forests, watersheds, and habitats and negatively affects biodiversity, agriculture, fisheries, and global climate change.” (Colburn, Hitch & Swegle, 2012). Illegal logging has caused mudslides to occur, carbon emissions to become increased, and species to become endangered. In certain areas like Peru, where illegal loggers have all but eradicated the Mahogany tree from existence, loggers are moving their aim to other less known species of trees. These certain trees- Copaoba, Ishpingo, and Capirona- are consid...
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...ut supplier countries signed up to the initiative have already made major progress on legality assurance." TTJ - The Timber Industry Magazine 7 Sept. 2013: 16+.
Maslin, J. L. M., Balzter, H., & Sweeting, M. (2013). Choose satellites to monitor deforestation: Illegal logging threatens tropical forests and carbon stocks. Governments must work together to build an early warning system, say Jim Lynch and colleagues. Nature, 496(7445), 293+.
Mills, R. (2014, March 3). 'Fingerprinting' trees to stop illegal logging. 'Fingerprinting' trees to stop illegal logging.
"Packaging and the EU timber regulation." Packaging Today Feb. 2013: 26.
Wallace, Scott. "Mahogany's last stand: illegal logging has all but wiped out Peru's mahogany. Loggers are turning their chain saws on lesser known species critical to the health of the rain forest." National Geographic Apr. 2013: 110+.
The history of logging goes back to the vast ponderosa pine forests of the southern Colorado Plateau in the 1870’s and 1880’s with the harvest of railroad ties and other products for construction of the transcontinental railroad. At first, the companies only wanted the big, high-grade ponderosa pine trees. They soon realized that the big trees run out and are hard to transport. In the 1920’s, new technology including chainsaws, bulldozers, and logging trucks allowed the logging companies to harvest at a much greater rate. By the depression, there were m...
“In addition to being places of magnificent beauty, the old growth forests of the world represent hundreds of years of life on this planet, and many of the trees are the tallest living things on the planet (Old Growth Forests, 2004).” Because of their size, these trees, and the forests they reside in, are targeted by logging companies such as Weyerhaeuser as highly profitable areas that provide supposed economical benefits to surrounding communities in the way of new jobs.
Deforestation is fast becoming one of the world’s worst environmental/geographical occurring disasters known to mankind, and is due to humankind’s greed, ignorance and carelessness when considering the future of our environment.
In South America lies the largest and most wondrous rainforest in the world, the Amazon Rainforest. This 1.4 billion acre forest represents over half of the planets remaining rainforests, and comprises the largest and most bio-diverse tract of rainforest in the world. Ten percent of all known species on the planet are found in this rain forest, most of which have yet to be discovered. For the past century, the Amazon has been gradually decreasing in size due to agricultural expansion, ranching, infrastructure projects, energy exploration and illegal logging. At its current state, the Amazon is losing land equal to the size of the state of Delaware every year. The destruction of this forest releases 340 million tons of carbon per year according to the World Wildlife Foundation, or WWF, which in turn cause climate changes everywhere around the world. Undiscovered species can hold the key to curing a plethora of diseases, but if those species become extinct those keys are lost forever. If nothing is done to prevent this, the world’s treasure trove of bio-diversity will cease to exist, creating irreversible damage to not only the South American people but also the rest of the world.
The devastating effects of hunting are made worse by logging companies that “provide the physical and social infrastructure for this anarchic exploitation. They supply the roads, workers, and ammunition to carry out this growing un-policed commercial enterprise. In the case of the Brazilian Amazon, the building of major roads for loggers to enter inaccessible regions has caused major forest loss, which directly threatens primate populations.
There exist in certain areas of rainforest in Indonesia timber barons who employ what are commonly referred to as logging gangsters. The victims of this social problem are not only the rare species that inhabit the rainforests, such as the Sumatran Tiger and Orangutan, but also those people who wish to do something to stop this depletion. Environmental activists and journalists attempting to document or protest the atrocities are often killed or severely beaten by the criminals. Like all illegal trafficking, the illegal rainforest wood trade exists only because there is an outside force demanding it. In this case, the force is that of high-income countries.
General Information: First off, deforestation is the clearing of forests or areas with trees to be converted into something else after. There are a few different ways forests are cleared. Clear cutting is simply removing everything in sight. Patch cutting is the removal of trees in specified patches. Strip cutting is removing trees in selected strips. The most environmentally friendly method is known as selective cutting. This is the removal of only selected trees, leaving the others un-harmed. The technique used most during deforestation is the slash and burn technique. This uses the basic cutting method of clear cutting, but afterwards everything that remains is burned to ash.
Rainforests once covered 14% of the worlds land surface, however now it only covers a mere 6%. It is estimated that all rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years. Trees are becoming more needed and used everyday. We need them cut down for many reasons such as paper and timber, while also needing them ‘untouched’ for other reasons like oxygen, we have to ask ourselves, which is more important? At the current rate, most of the rainforests are being cut down for resources like paper and timber, but less importance is being placed on main resources like oxygen.
Though deforestation has increased at an alarming rate throughout the past fifty years, deforestation has been performed during the course of history. According to the World Resources Institute, a majority of the world’s enduring naturally occurring forests are found in Alaska, Canada, Russia and the Northwestern Amazon. Research has demonstrated forests are more likely to be destroyed and repurposed where economic revenues tied to agriculture and pasture are prominent, typically attributed to advantageous weather conditions, or lower expenses of demolishing the forest and delivering merchandises to the global
Scientists themselves are just beginning to understand the serious problems caused by deforestation. Deforestation occurs all over the world by all types of people. Peasant farmers even add to the problem because in most tropical countries the farmers are very poor only making between eight hundred and fifty four hundred dollars annually (NASA Facts). Therefore, they do not have enough money to buy what they need to live therefore they must farm to raise crops for food and to sell. In these poor countries the majority of people are peasant farmers this farming adds up to a great deal of deforestation. These farmers chop down a small area of trees for there plot to farm on and burn the tree trunks (NASA Facts). The combined number of farmers maintaining this process creates a great deal of clearing and burning of the land they need to cultivate, which results in land being treeless. Commercial logging is also another common form of deforestation. This commercial logging wipes out massive amounts of land sometimes deforesting several miles at...
The single biggest direct cause of tropical deforestation is conversion to cropland and pasture, mostly for subsistence, which is growing crops or raising livestock to meet daily needs. The conversion to agricultural land usually results from multiple direct factors. For example, countries build roads into remote areas to improve overland transportation of goods. The road development itself causes a limited amount of deforestation. But roads also provide entry to previously inaccessible—and often unclaimed—land. Logging, both legal and illegal, often follows road expansion (and in some cases is the reason for the road expansion). When loggers have harvested an area’s valuable timber, they move on. The roads and the logged areas become a magnet for settlers—farmers and ranchers who slash and burn the remaining forest for cropland or cattle pasture, completing the deforestation chain that began with road building. In other cases, forests that have been degraded by logging become fire-prone and are eventually deforested by repeated accidental fires from adjacent farms or pastures.
Deforestation is the elimination of existing trees from the earth; attributable factors include urbanization, logging, ranching, and farming and to some extent land speculation. Land speculation can be included as cleared land is more valuable than forested land. Deforestation, done in the name of progress, and the long-term, devastating effects of it, is killing our planet.
To obtain and transport has to be quick, easy and the cost has to be minimal. To make all these possible roads are being built through forests. These causes a great deal of damage to the forests because more trees have to be removed again to mine this merchandise. Brazil is once again a prime. example of forest destruction in the United States.
The Disappearing Rainforests Conserving the rainforest is a global issue of great importance. Tropical rainforests provide a habitat for animals, a unique ecosystem for vegetation, and an abundance of resources for humans, yet they are being destroyed at an astonishing rate. Experts estimate that if these endangered territories continue to be consumed in this manner, no more will be standing in forty years (Rainforest). Examining the social, environmental, and economic costs of the continued destruction of the Earth's tropical rainforests will prove that deforestation for short-term profit is ultimately not viable.
Countries that experience massive amounts of deforestation are ones that in particular are unstable economically. As stated before, countries like Brazil, Asian Oceanic spots like Indonesia, a handful of African countries, and a portion of European communities see the most activity. The ones in that seem most devastated by such is Brazil and countries in the Asia Oceanic. Why you ask? Well, apart from being close to the bottom in the economic spectrum, these countries are home to countless rainforests. With of cutting down of these trees brings into play a major cause in our world today; illegal clear cutting. What causes such an act? For starters, the main priority for these countries is expansion. To expand and provide for the people, making land available for infrastructure, and this in retrospect creates another cause, urbanization in the Amazon. Approximately, the population in Brazil has increased by 25%, a substantial increase when you compare to just 8% in the 90 's (Costa, M. H. 2009). As an economist we can sense what the future hold for a country like Brazil, with increase in population, we see an uprise in deforestation. As a result, the demand for land, homes, paper, oil and other commercial materials becomes in-demand for the society. Taking a step back and looking at the big picture quickly becomes an afterthought, leading to the destruction to many endangered species housed within. Over the course deforestation it has been practiced, with no policy or intention to punish its instigators. The WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) has estimated that some of our planet 's most precious species reside in such areas (Shukl, G. 2012). The loss of such biodiversity effects humans directly, with an estimated 70% of our food and plants come from these areas (Shukl, G. 2012). Maintaining such a Biodiversity is essential in maintain a healthy ecosystem, and finding potential cures