Forest Exploration Should Be For Eco-System Balance

Forest is a major natural resource of nearly every country. It is habitat to thousands of plant and animal species. It provides not only wood, medicines and other products but also ecological services such as cleaning the air, stabilizing the soil ... Under the pressure of the population explosion and the increasing demand for materials and fuel, the exploration of forests have been intensified. Leading to a controversial issue is whether forests should be exploited for economic purposes or ecological purposes. In our opinion, we should consider forest for ecosystem as a natural resource that needs to be preserved in terms of dealing with climate changes and biodiversity protection.

The first reason why forest ecosystem should be explored for environmental purposes is biodiversity preserving. Biodiversity is the variety of life at different level of biological organization, such as the genetic, species, and ecosystem level. We can see the fact that forest provides habitat and food for terrestrial fauna and flora, which is an essential part of human’s life. According to biologist’s data, forest covers 26% of the earth’s land surface and is home for at least 80% species (World Bank, 2008). Nowadays, the forest environment is threatened by human’s activities such as logging, deforestation, overexploitation, infrastructure, etc, leading to biodiversity loss and degradation at high rate, which is estimated “double within another decade” (Miller, 1998, p.342). For example, loss of original forest cover is 98% in Haiti, 97% in Philippines. In 2006 studies of FAO, the annual conversion of forest land to agriculture is permanently about 13 million hectares, especially the tropics (World Bank, 2008). If people do not realize the risk of issues and stop immediately, the future of tropical forest is “the most serious environmental problem” (Miller, 1998, p.343). A biologist named Edward O. Wilson (as cited in Miller, 1998) said that “At least 20% of tropical forest spices could be gone by 2022, as many as 505 by 2042”, and “no extinction of this size has occurred for million years” (p.343). These statistics shows how serious forest biodiversity is. Whether benefits from forest or biodiversity protection is currently more significant. If people exploit continuously, it is certainly about nothing to explore again and also means that has no food, no products for economy. Furthermore, it leads to ecosystem imbalance.

Another reason for a sound exploration of forest is that forest moderates the global climate system. Firstly, it helps to maintain soil and water. Forest’s watersheds serve as “a giant sponges” (Miller, 1998, p.340), control the water runoff, contribute to reduce soil erosion and prevent forest from “natural disasters” in example “floods”, “landslides” (World Bank, 2008, p.1), etc. Moreover, a great deal of vapor held and absorbed in the leaves and the shade of trees control temperature, increase humidity in the atmosphere in forested land (Enger & Smith, 1998). Miller (1998) said that the evaporation and transpiration also support 50% to 80% of the moisture in the tropics.

Secondly, forest has a nickname “the lungs of the earth” (Miller, 1991, p.330) because it helps to purify the air. During photosynthesis process, as Enger and Smith (1998) reported that leaves emit “large amount of dioxide” and reduce “carbon dioxide levels” in the air and thus “contribute to global warming” (p.196). Miller (1991) also showed that deforest devastation, mostly in exploiting tropical forests, realized that contributed to about 20% the increase in the amount of carbon dioxide. Therefore, forest is really vital to global carbon cycle.

Supporters of exploring forest for economic purposes might say that the economy will face up with hardship if there are few forests for timber production and thus exploiting them for human’s demand is better than letting them die gradually (Enger & Smith, 1998). However, it is only true in some extent. According to Reven, Berg and Johnson (1998), “The timber industry removed trees faster than the forest could regenerate” (p.146). Thus forest exploitation must be accompanied with reforestation and effective management. In fact, according to the nonpartisan U.S Congressional Research Service (1997) “Of the 104 national forests, 83 forests lost money on timber sales” (p.313) and the price of timber production is not enough to deal with flood damage and habitat destruction (Cunningham & Saigo, 2003). Therefore the users should consider the long-term effects of exploitation and keep away from deficit in production and management.

Forests are important because of their contribution as the maintenance of vital ecosystem functions as well as potential economic value to human. Thus, exploring the forest needs be put in consideration. When ecosystem was changed seriously causing natural disasters, whether the economy is still important? To summarize, forest exploration should be for ecosystem balance in the role of coping with climate changes and biodiversity loss. “It is the responsibility of all who are alive today to accept the trusteeship of wildlife and to hand on to posterity” (Miller,1991,p.212).