What does deforestation got to do with it?

In school you use paper every day. Whether it is for note taking purposes, class work that your teacher gives you, notes to your friends or crush, or even for art class. You might even find yourself wasting paper in class writing down thoughts or just simple doodles. When you get home from school you might have work left to do for the following school day. All this homework that is assigned to you is on paper. If you pay attention you may notice that several things you use in your everyday life outside of school is made out of paper as well.

Have you ever thought about where this paper has come from?

Figure 1: paper mill

Paper is made out of the wood that comes from trees. The trees get cut down and then sent to a paper mill (Figure 1) where several variations of paper products are made. These products could range from plates, pencils, construction paper, to the paper in your notebooks. All these trees are available for these products because of deforestation. Deforestation is act of cutting down trees to make room for other users. Trees are cut down all the time for a lot of reasons. We remove large areas of trees to make room for more living space, shopping centers, and the farming industry. Our population is constantly growing and it will always be growing larger so that means we will always need to make more room for living space. Since our population is growing constantly that means we will also always need room for farming space and shopping centers. Farms take up a lot of space because there needs to be room for the cattle to live and room for the crops to be planted and grown. This is all sort of a domino effect, since there needs to be more room for farms there needs to be more shopping centers to get the food products from the farm to your kitchen table.

Can you think of the natural causes of deforestation?

Figure 2: forest fire 

.Some natural causes of deforestation are forest fires (Figure 2) caused by dry seasons and lighting. Yes, I said lighting. When there is a thunderstorm the lighting from it will strike a tree causing it to die and catch on fire making the trees surrounding it to become on fire too. When a dry season happens it causes the trees to have a shortage of the water that it needs to survive. The trees then can become so dry that they catch on fire from the sunlight.

What happens to the animals when their home is taken from them?

When an area of land is deforested it causes animals and their homes to be affected. The animals are forced to migrate due to their natural habitat being affected. Then they are forced to migrate, they effect the other animals living in the area they migrated to as well. This causes over population of animals in an area. Which then can force certain species to face a major population decrease because the animals in that area will have to fight to survive.

Figure 3: recycling plant

Is there anything you can do to help?

The answer is yes! One way you can help out is taking all your old papers from school along with any other paper and putting it into the recycling bin. Then you can take it to the recycling plant (Figure 3) with your parents where it will get sent away to get busted down and made into new paper. Another way you can help is taking part in Earth Day. Earth Day is a day dedicated to planting different variations of plants. Don't forget you can plant plants and recycle any and every day of the year, it doesn't have to be Earth Day just for you to help the planet!