>It is the conversion of cleared land into agricultureal >land that knock off the rainforest......But even these >if abundant, soon turnthemselves back into >secondary jungle. >Would you advocate that these people do not >convert forest into agricultural land to feed their >people?
That seems to be the biggest problem in saving the rainforests, the people
have legitimate questions about the industrial revolution in other nations
and it's a hard fight to convince them not to do the same things that so
many other nations have done.
>Having said this much, who are the people who >are doing the curvings, or funiture makings? >What right have we to deprived them of their lively >hoods just that we may feel that we are saving >the rainforest?...The land is theirs and they have to >make a living out of it. >Until we start to attempt to help them with an alternative >lively hood, we should not consider our previlage >to deprive them of what they are doing now. >(and then again, it is our perogative to 'help' them >to a new lively hood?)
Actually in many areas that is being done now, but tradition dies hard.
Clear cutting or burning forests is a common method now used and it can do
permanent damage, even if the forest regrows. There is a lot of resistance
to the loss of old family or tribal methods, it isn't always a matter of
offering alternatives, it's a problem sometimes getting them to be
accepted.
>Anyway why are we so concern with just >Tropical Rainforests? >What about temperate forests and grasslands >wetlands,and peatbogs? >What about farmlands which were once forests?
Biodiversity. I don't know about SE Asia, but in South America species
have been documented that exist nowhere in the world outside of a
particular valley or section of the rain forest. For many reasons, some of
which I don't honestly understand, the rainforests seem to be a very
active area that can't be matched by any other area that I'm aware of.
When that valley is destroyed, whole species can become extinct even if
the forest regrows. Given the number of species of both plant and animal
life, and the fact that so many modern medicines came from natural
sources, many people wonder if the cure for any number of problems we have
may not have been destroyed before we had a chance to recognize it.
>Why keep forests at all? >.----for oxygen? >---- biodiversity /genetic pool? >---- esthetics? >----tourism? >----??? >This last question may seem a simple question to answer.
>It is not!
That's true. From what I understand most oxygen comes from the oceans.
Biodiversity and the gene pool I'd be the most concerned with. Tourists do
too much damage for me to care much about ;-)