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Young people don’t buy mature
Every minute of the past few years, people have destroyed more than 40 tree-planted areas the size of soccer fields. Adding up these areas results in a loss of about one green planet the size of the UK each year.
Even with the replanting of these areas of land, much is lost, because the more mature the vegetation is destroyed, the more unrecognizable the forests of today become. A new global analysis has revealed that over the past century, in the face of deforestation, the average size of trees has decreased dramatically. This has a great impact on forest dynamics, global warming and the type of life we are used to.
“They (the old destroyed forests) have been partially replaced by non-forests and young forests. This has implications for biodiversity, climate mitigation and forestry,” says scientist Nate McDowell of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He is the main author of the new analysis mentioned.
Currently, most deforestation is caused by deforestation and land use. It is also detrimental to global warming. “This trend is likely to continue as the weather warms up,” adds McDowell. “The planet of the future, with fewer old and large forests, will be very different from what we are used to.”
It is unknown what will happen to these forests in the future, but 21 the authors of this review argue that continued deforestation and increasing threats to the environment, such as heat, drought, fire and disease, will only further reduce the number of trees on Earth.
And he wanted all the children who joined TIME to know that he not only wanted his money, but he wanted his solutions … He wanted each child to know that he was as important as Bill Gates in terms of his contribution. .
Based on more than 160 previous studies from around the world, the new analysis carefully compiles literature to document data on forest growth, development and mortality.
Disappears at night
Since the end of the last century, satellite imagery and deforestation studies have revealed a dramatic decrease in the age and height of forests, with a sharp increase in the area of forests less than 140 years old.
In fact, the authors of the analysis say that today’s global vegetation biomass is only 50 percent. as it was before, and this is only due to the change in land use.
Overall, the historical (change in land use) and net effects of wood yields have led to significant reductions in forest area and demographic changes, leading to younger, shorter and less ecosystems diverse “, concludes the study.
Scientists have been issuing warning messages for some time. 2012 California was found to lose 95 percent. In Sweden, and in Sweden, the density of large trees was reduced by more than 90%.
Despite fear of ecological collapse, in British Columbia, western Canada, loggers are still slowing down the growth of mature vegetation, and those stories are heard in almost every corner of the world. Just a few years ago, the world lost almost 4 million. hectares of growing tropical forest, which is the size of the whole of Belgium.
“We see these forests disappear overnight,” forest ecologist Michelle Connolly, director of Conservation North, a longtime conservation organization, told Narwhal magazine in January.
“It is happening very fast, and there is little mature growth left in northern British Columbia. It is an environmental crisis, no less tragic than the loss of coral reefs and tropical forests,” he adds.
It no longer traps carbon dioxide.
When an old forest is cut down, the carbon dioxide stored in its trees remains in them. However, depending on how the wood is harvested, carbon dioxide can be released back into the atmosphere.
An open space facilitates the early establishment of small plants that thrive on carbon dioxide. However, the loss of old natural pillars inevitably reduces overall species diversity, which not only completely alters the ecosystem, but also reduces the potential for forest carbon sequestration.
Although global carbon emissions are improving in small increments, tree extinction rates are growing much faster. The authors of the analysis acknowledge that many tree species have adapted and migrated in response to past climate cycles, but today, climate change, according to the researchers, is unprecedented.
Children also invest
With the destruction of ancient forests, rare wildlife species are also disappearing. The Israeli Uri Shan, who earned a doctorate in zoology from Tel Aviv University, earned a postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia University, and eventually joined the Department of Biology and Environment at Haifa-Oranim University in Israel, often He asked: How can he and other inhabitants of Earth contribute to more than just language-based planetary rescue?
U.Shan is not only a researcher and professor, but also an environmental activist. He is one of the founders of the environmental organization Adam Teva V’Din, led an anti-highway campaign that became Route 6 and played a key role in the battle to protect the Samara Dune in the southern Arava Valley in Israel. There, together with his students and the Arava Environmental Research Institute, he conducts research regularly.
“For eight years we campaigned to save the dunes from commercial sand mining, and we lost. Then one day I took Shaul Goldstein (Director of the Israel Nature and Parks Administration (INPA)) to the dunes. The trucks already they had come to collect the sand. I said to Goldstein, “I will buy sand from a contractor.” He looked at me like he was crazy, and much later he said he came back to his office and wondered why he should buy sand when he, like INPA director, he could do it himself, “says U.Shan.
Democracy today is not what it used to be.
“He paid the contractor, ordered the Israeli land authorities to agree to save the site and gradually it becomes a nature reserve. I gave him an idea and what he could not do in eight years, he managed to implement in two months,” adds the activist. .
“I realized that biodiversity hotspots cover 2.3 percent of the world’s land area and that more than 50 percent of them are in private hands. I couldn’t save all the land, so I said, let’s start here.” says U.Shan.
This is how TIME arose: “This is My Earth”, the first international, democratic, voluntary, collective financing and non-profit organization focused on the purchase of lands dominated by rich biological resources. diversity, but represents a serious threat to their survival.
U.Shan dreamed that people of any age and even children could join the organization. “And he wanted all the children who joined TIME to know that he not only wanted his money, but he wanted his decisions, his participation. He wanted every child to know that, in terms of his contribution, he is as important as Bill Gates.” , opens the scientist.
To join an organization and vote for the natural habitat to be preserved, you must pay an annual fee of at least $ 1.
Today TIME unites about 5 thousand. members, probably half of them Israeli. Several handfuls of schools also participate in the project. “Today’s democracy is not what it used to be. We need to teach children the basics of why democracy is important and how it works,” adds U.Shan.
On behalf of the locals
Overseas individuals and organizations wishing to acquire land to preserve their environment must complete detailed forms and prepare for in-depth inspections by a scientific advisory board of international experts.
Each year three projects are published on the TIME website and voted on. Each vote has the same weight, regardless of how much each member has contributed. The money raised is distributed proportionally to the projects according to the proportion of votes. If less popular projects fail to raise enough money to buy land, wait until the minimum amount is reached or the money is transferred to the boiler for most of the selected project.
The first campaign was carried out in 2016. During it, more than 30 thousand. Dollars for a stretch of nearly 66 hectares in the El Toro forest in the Peruvian Amazon, home to a critically endangered woolly yellow-tailed monkey. The stretch forms a natural biological corridor between protected areas, allowing creatures to travel between them and reducing forest fragmentation.
2017 17 thousand were collected on the platform. Dollars for which other land was purchased, as well as in the Peruvian Amazon. The area was depleted by illegal logging and hunters. It is rich in a variety of rare and endemic species (which exist only there) and endangered birds and mammals, including hummingbirds and jaguars.
2018 the organization spent 30 thousand. $ Five per acre in Belize, the ecological point of global marine biodiversity.
The planet of the future, with fewer old and large forests, will be very different from what we are already used to.
Last year TIME bought 35 hectares of land in the Magdalena Valley of Colombia. This area is threatened by deforestation, which is leading to livestock. There are about 20 percent in the area. Colombian bird habitats and many other creatures, such as the critically endangered brown spider monkey and the Turtle River turtle.
This year, members must vote on two projects in Kenya and one in Brazil.
The organization emphasizes that land is bought on behalf of local people or organizations, based on the idea that long-term success depends on the participation of people living in and around forests.
For example, the aforementioned section of the El Toro forest in the Peruvian Amazon, with TIME’s help, in 2016. purchased by two local farmers, members of the La Esperanza community, working closely with conservation partners in the nature of TIME in Peru.
Farmers work on some of the acquired land that has already been deforested, while protecting the rest of the area. The security agreement ensures that no further logging will take place and that local people will supervise and patrol the land.
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