Word Count: 2388″This land is where we know where to find all that it provides for us–foodfrom hunting and fishing, and farms, building and tool materials,medicines. This land keeps us together within its mountains; we come tounderstand that we are not just a few people or separate villages, but onepeople belonging to a homeland” (Colins 32). The “homeland” is the UpperMazaruni District of Guyana, a region in the Amazon rain forest where theAkawaio Indians make their home (32). The vast rain forest, oftenregarded as just a mass of trees and exotic species, is to many indigenouspeople a home.
This home is being destroyed as miners, loggers, anddevelopers move in on the cultures of these people to strip away theirresources and complicate the peaceful, simple lives of these primitivetribes. However, the tribes are not the only ones who lose in thissitutation. If rain forest invasion continues, mankind as a whole will lose avaluable treasure: the knowledge of these people in utilizing the resourcesand plants of the forest for food, building, and medicine. To prevent thisloss, the governments of the countries housing the rain forests shouldprovide some protection for the forest and its inhabitants throughlegislation, programs. Also, environmentalists should pursue educatingthe tribes in managing thier resources for pragmatic, long-term profitthrough conservation. Although hard to believe, the environmental problems of todaystarted a long time before electricty was invented, before automobilieslittered the highways, and before industries dotted the countryside.
From ancient times to the Industrial Revolution, humans began to change theface of the earth. As populations increased and technology improved andexpanded, more significant and widespread problems arose. “Today,unprecedented demands on the environment from a rapidly expandinghuman population and from advancing technology are causing a continuingand acelerating decline in the quality of the environment and its ability tosustain life” (Ehrlich 98). Increasing numbers of humans are intruding onremaining wild land-even in those areas once considered relatively safefrom exploitation. Tropical forests, especially in southest Asia and theAmazon River Basin, are being destroyed at an alarming rate for timber,conversion to crop and grazing lands, pine plantations, and settlements.
According to researcher Howard Facklam, “It was estimated at one point inthe 1980s that such forest lands were being cleared at the rate of 20(nearly 50 acres) a minute; another estimate put the rate at more than200,000 sq km (more than 78,000 sq mi) a year. In 1993, satellite dataprovided the rate of deforestation could result in the extinction of as manyas 750,000 speices, which would mean the loss of a muliplicity ofproducts: food, fibers, medical drungs, dyes, gums, and resins” (53). Sowhat kind of condition will the forests be in in the year 2050? If this rate ofdeforestation continues, there will be no tropical rain forest in the year2050. Therefore, preservation need to occur now in order stop the terribleloss of the rain forests and all that it can provide.
Rain forest destruction has two deadly causes: loggers and miners. For example, imagine loggers on bulldozers rolling into the forest, tearingdown not only trees, but the invisible barrier between the modern,materialistic world and the serene paradise under the forest canopy. Forest locals told Scholastic Update that “. . .
so much forest has vanishedthat the weather has changed delaying rains and increasing heat. . . .
” (Leo19). Along with the loggers come miners seeking the gold and otherminerals found in the forest. The article “My Trip to the Rain Forest” pointsout that the rivers of the rain forests become poisoned by the mercuryleaked in gold-mining. This exposes the tribes to diseases which they haveno immunity to, such as malaria, tuberculsis, and the flu.
The miners alsobring in violence, which has killed over 1,500 members of one tribe in theAmazon. Many of the tribes leave their ancestoral homes to flee the noiseand disruption of the miners (Smith 66). Certainly, these loggers andminers must not think of the areas they invade and destroy as a home. Conseuently, invading the rain forest is no different than bullsdozersleveling out a suburb in the United States. The lifestyles in rain forestvillages and American towns are vastly different, but the two share one veryimportant similarity: in these settlements live human beings with minds,families, and feelings.
In fact, there is a way to limit deforestation of the rain forest: through forest conservation. The .
