One of the worst human activity that has impacted our environment drastically is Deforestation. 30 percent of the world’s land area is forest cover. Because of deforestation we have lost 50% world's tree count. People cut down 15 Billion trees every year. 

To begin with, main causes of Deforestation world over are agriculture and Illegal  logging. Farmers in developing countries, follow the practice of cutting and burning trees to make the land suitable for agriculture. Commonly known as “slash and burn” agriculture where farmers cut down large number of trees to grow new crops. Today, between 200 and 500 million people use slash and burn agriculture, roughly 7% of the world's population.

In the mid west countries oak savannas forest areas have reduced remarkably in  its size giving space to corn fields around. Rainforest, often called the lungs of our earth as it supplies 20% of Earth’s oxygen, it is being continuously slashed and burnt leading  to its destruction  every hour by 50 acres. Uncontrolled activities by humans have eliminated many colonial species, such as American chestnuts, eastern white pine, American elm, oaks, ash, and hemlocks. 

 Another human activity that leads to deforestation on a massive scale is illegal logging which is 15% and 30% of all wood traded on a global scale. As per Interpol, one-fourth of Russia’s timber exports is based on illegal logging. 50% to 90% of deforestation in the Amazon Basin, Central Africa, and Southeast Asia attributes to illegal logging.

Deforestation is very much based on the development strategies of human beings. Forests are cleared to expand or build roads, to improve the infrastructure and for construction purpose. In the United States, 33% of all houses are near a forest. With each passing year, there has been unscrupulous increase in the ambition and vested interests of humans with no regards to bio diversity and climate of the earth.

The unjustified and unbridled human activities have heavily costed our environment. The loss of trees not only causes climate change, desertification, soil erosion, fewer crops, flooding, increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and a host of problems for indigenous people.

Wild Fires is another major effect of deforestation. When humans cut or burn trees its affects the ecosystem which absorbs millions of tons of carbon emissions every year. When those trees are cut or burned, they not only release the carbon they were storing, but a tool to absorb carbon emissions disappears. Between 2000 and 2009, 32 million acres of tropical rainforest were cut down. At that rate, deforestation will add 200 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere in coming decades.

For months,  many countries like Australia, Indonesia, North America, European countries are reeling under huge bushfires. Due to human activities, greenhouse gases have raised Earth's average temperature by an estimated one degree Celsius since the 19th century.  There has been increase in the warmth of the sea surface by 0.8 degrees Celsius. The warmer the ocean gets, the less energy and CO2 the water is able to absorb and store from the atmosphere. Warmer seas accelerates the fire in the dried up vegetation  and degraded forests around.

Millions of species have lost their habitat due to deforestation.

Deforestation costs $4.5 trillion  each year through the loss of biodiversity. For example, half of all pharmaceuticals comes from genetic resources.

In the last 50 years, 17% of the Amazon rainforest has been destroyed which has increasingly destabilized the water cycle in the forest leading to intermittent droughts and floods.

At current rates of deforestation, the world’s rain forests will be gone by 2120.

crdeit : national geographic.com, www.dw.com/wildfires

image - sciencefocus.com