Deforestation is the removal of forests by cutting and burning to provide land for agriculture, residential, industrial building and roads or by using the trees for building materials, or fuel. Deforestation occurs mainly for economic reasons; a lot of money in global trading of wood, farms and industry comes from rainforest deforestation. Rainforests are being destroyed at an alarming rate that could potentially lead to many different types of environmental catastrophes, not only in the local forest zone, but globally. This is a very conflicted and controversial issue between many different environmentalist groups as some people want to preserve the global rainforests and the wildlife however others want to destroy it and reap the benefits.
To understand the effects of deforestation one must know the reason and the causes of why people cut the trees down. Firstly poor and indigenous tribes need to clear rainforest land to make space for their cattle to graze. This is because the cattle provide milk and meat which can be used or sold and this is an economic reason as mentioned earlier. Another reason is residential area; due to such large populations in Brazil and Africa rainforest land needs to be cleared in order to provide space to build housing to support the population. Logging is also a major cause of deforestation because wood from trees is fairly cheap to cut but very expensive in the market. Rosewood is the most expensive wood and sells for $1,800 per cubic metre. Also there is such a high rate of deforestation because there are many international companies working in the rainforest cutting down trees for wood to sell as there is such a high demand for it across the world. However even after the effort of environmental groups to change this it has led to conflicts because change is difficult to cope with for the industry and money makers.
