Imagine a nation consumed by fire, void of wildlife and free of oxygen. Imagine a world prone to incurable sicknesses and unprecedented death. Imagine a wasteland of deserted earth or an entire planet’s identity as a water-deprived desert. Imagine leaving the confines of your home, only to be welcomed by sandy, open plains, completely destitute of trees or plants or animals. How would you feel? As deforestation with respect to the world’s rainforests grows throughout our sensitive environment, these tragedies, these imaginings, they become very real.
As humans, our entire survival depends on the inhalation of oxygen, which is most abundantly produced through the rainforests that are readily destroyed daily. According to rainforestmaker.org, “Rainforests once covered 14 percent of the Earth’s surface, and now only cover less than six percent.” It goes on to say that the remaining forests “could be consumed in less than 40 years.” This is terrifying due to the fact that everyone is susceptible to the effects of a dying planet, especially those accustomed to the pleasures of a wooded upbringing, such as me. Most children more than likely grew up adventuring through the pine trees or hunting the animals of the forest. However, as deforestation grows, so does the extinction of those very pine trees or those very animals. Think about how many people have suffered the loss of a loved one to the death grip of cancer. Almost all of us have. Ironically, the same rainforests that are terrorized for the sake of mere land are most commonly believed to harbor that very cure.
I have always been a strong supporter of the fight to save the rainforest, most likely due to my love for nature. As a descendant of the Mowa Choctaw tribe located in Washington County, not only does my heart beat for the forest, but my heritage bleeds as well. According to the Save the Amazon Coalition, there were an estimated ten million Indians living in the Amazonian Rainforest five centuries ago. However, today there are less than 200,000. As the homelands of many Native Americans continue to be destroyed by deforestation, tribes, such as my family’s own, are also disappearing. Therefore, I would like to present why the fight to prevent the destruction of the rainforest should be held as a more urgent priority. The three most susceptible reasons include the world’s loss of oxygen, loss of species diversity, and loss of a future cure for cancer due to deforestation.
The first reason to fight to save the rainforest is oxygen. Without the air we breathe, death is inevitable within minutes. According to savetheamazon.org, “The Amazon Rainforest has been described as the ‘Lungs of our Planet’ in most regions.” This is due to the fact that it provides the essential environmental world service of continuously recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen. Moreover, “more than 20 percent of the world oxygen is actually produced in the Amazon Rainforest.” By our destruction of the forests, we are essentially killing ourselves. In fact, savetherainforest.org states that “the tropical rainforests are the single greatest terrestrial source of air that we breathe.” However, not only does deforestation dwindle our oxygen intake, but it also leads to mass species extinction.
The loss of a single species can set off a chain reaction affecting many other species, which leads to a collapse in the sensitive ecosystem by which the earth flourishes. Through this collapse, chaos quickly arises as natural resources are lost. According to rainforest maker.org, “more than half of the world’s ten million species call the tropical rainforests home.” However, the earth is losing “137 plant, insect and animal species each day – or more than 50,00 species per year.” As the homelands of many indigenous organisms continue to be destroyed by deforestation, tribes are also disappearing. The website savetherainforest.org states, "we are presently experiencing the largest mass extinction since the demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago; only this time it’s occurring at a much faster rate.” With the destruction of the rainforests, over half the plant and animal species on earth, as well as numerous indigenous cultures will disappear forever. As the rainforest biodiversity disappears, so do many possible cures for life-threatening diseases, such as cancer.
According to an article written by Katie Noble on deforestation, “there is growing concern that the potential for a cancer cure has been, or soon will be destroyed as deforestation continues on such a large scale and at such a fast rate that there is no chance of scientists investigating which plants are potentially cancer curing.” The website savetheamazon.org states that while “25 percent of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients,” less than one percent of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists. We are literally destroying the rainforest faster than we can explore it. The U.S. National Cancer Institute proclaims to have identified 3,000 plants that are active against cancer cells. Of these, 70 percent are found in the rainforest. In fact, one example of a cancer-fighting herb located only within the boundaries of the rainforest is seen through a story uploaded on a website entitled The Guardian. The story follows the discovery of EBC-46, or a drug derived from the seeds of a fruit found in north Queensland rainforests, that is used to destroy cancerous tumors. The study’s lead author, Dr. Glen Boyle, states, “In preclinical trials, we injected it into our models and within five minutes, you see a purpling of the area that looks like a bruise. About 24 hours later, the tumor area goes black, a couple of days later you see a scab, and at around the 1.5 week mark, the scab falls off, leaving clean skin with no tumor there. The speed certainly surprised me.” Twenty-five percent of the active ingredients in today's cancer-fighting drugs comes from organisms found only in the rainforest. Therefore, savetherainforest.org writes that “if a cure for cancer is to be found, it’ll almost certainly come from the tropical rainforests.”
If strong and decisive action is not taken immediately to reverse the destruction of this vital ecosystem or the rainforest, the consequences will be catastrophic. In fact, many scientists agree that the earth could very well become uninhabitable for virtually every living species, including humans. Deforestation causes not only a loss of oxygen but also a loss in biodiversity and cancer medicine. Norman Myers writes that tropical rainforests are the Earth’s oldest continuous ecosystems. Therefore, it is hard to believe that “every second we lose an area the size of two football fields; every minute we lose an area 29 times the size of the Pentagon; every hour we lose an area 684 times larger than the New Orleans Superdome; every day we lose an area larger than all five boroughs of New York City; every week we lose an area twice the size of Rhode Island; every month we lose an area the size of Belize; and every year . . . we lose an area more than twice the size of Florida.”
