Who is hurting the rainforest

When a 35 metre tree is felled, it can crush up to 17 smaller trees as it crashes to the ground. There may be only two or three commercially viable trees in an area of forest the size of two football pitches. Trees are also cut down for wood pulp, which until recently came only from softwoods like Canadian conifers.

The pulp is used to make paper. Road building through rainforests is another problem, making illegal logging and the poaching of animals much easier. In Africa apes such as gorillas and other animals are hunted for bushmeat to be sold by roadsides and in the markets. Many apes are vulnerable to diseases. To avoid buying this wood in the UK, the most recognised and trustworthy standard is the Forestry Stewardship Council logo on wood and paper products which ensures the source was from sustainably managed forests.

Most of the beef in the UK is not sourced from Brazil. However, livestock can still be indirectly responsible for rainforest destruction since intensively farmed animals in the UK are fed a high protein plant called soya. China, with its growing demands for beef has in recent years become the largest consumer of soya from Brazil. Most of the world's soya comes from South America where areas of rainforest, as well as other habitats like the savannahs have been planted with this crop.

At first the land may be very productive. Eventually the good topsoil will be washed away by the rains within three or four years and the area may become a desert. Otherwise farmers may resort to using more and more fertilizers and pesticides which bring with them their own problems such as the pollution of rivers. Soy plants may also be genetically modified - still a controversial issue.

Have you heard of palm oil? How about vegetable oil or olive oil? Oils from plants, vegetables, seeds and nuts have been used for centuries all over the world for many different foods and products.

It is used in bread, cereals, chocolates, pizzas, cleaning products, chewing gum and even shampoo. Sometimes land is cleared so that it can be replanted with valuable cash crops such as the oil palm plant, which produces palm oil. It can also be used as a biofuel instead of petrol or diesel. Valuable trees are harvested and the rest are burnt to clear the land for the farming of palm oil.

In burning the rainforests Indonesia is also burning the peatlands below which store masses of carbon. Their peatlands cover just 0. This makes Indonesia the country with the 3rd largest carbon footprint in the world, when deforestation is taken into account! Bio-fuel targets in Europe mean that demand for palm oil is set to increase, despite the fact that more pollution is caused producing bio-fuels than is saved by not using petrol and diesel. Cats, dogs, pigs, cows and goldfish. All the way from Asia, pets all over the country are eating food containing palm kernel meal.

Imported products are products grown or made in other countries and then shipped to the UK, the opposite of this is exports - products made in the UK and sent to other countries. One victim of palm oil plantations is the orangutan. Sadly, experts believe deforestation for palm oil is the single greatest threat to orangutans in the wild. According to the IUCN, over the last ten years their numbers have halved and up to are killed every year, despite their status as protected species.

See our orangutan factsheet below for more information. Alencar says the majority of deforestation in so far happened through land grabbing of public property.

This will likely be turned into cattle land, Alencar says. Deforestation in Brazil has spiked since last year, when President Jair Bolsonaro took office.

Shortly after being sworn in, he began promoting the development of the Amazon rainforest, including indigenous reserves, calling it necessary to lift locals out of poverty. Last week, Bolsonaro authorised the army to deploy in the Amazon to fight fires and illegal logging. But environmentalists say this will not solve the problems on the ground in the long term. Forest fires in the Amazon generally occur during the dry season when people employ a slash and burn method to turn forest into agriculture land.

Smoke from the fires led to a public health alert , causing respiratory illnesses in people living in nearby cities. As well as harvesting timber, land is deforested in the Amazon for cattle ranching and growing crops Credit: Getty Images.

In early May, the country was declared the new global epicenter of coronavirus. Neighbouring Colombia has already seen an uptick in forest fires in the first months of This is almost three times more than the 4, hot spots indicated last year during the same month. Miguel Pacheco, natural resources and livelihoods coordinator with WWF-Colombia, says quarantine measures have not been the cause of this increase in hotspots, but they could exacerbate the problem.

Since Colombia went into lockdown in late March, monitoring flights by the armed forces that normally circle the region have significantly reduced. This could allow armed groups to take advantage of this lack of environmental control and continue to clear the area for cattle, coca plantation or other crops, as long as these quarantine measures persist, he says.

Environmental authorities also reported an increase in illegal logging, wild animal trafficking and poaching of large cats since quarantine began, says Pacheco. In Colombia, lockdown poses the next in a long line of social changes that have fuelled deforestation.

The destruction of rainforest has been a major concern since , when the FARC guerrillas and the Colombian government signed a peace agreement. When the guerrillas demobilised from their holding areas in the jungle, it left the regions open to exploitation. In many areas, that meant armed groups and other organised crime cleared the forest for cattle and pasture land, particularly the Amazon states of Caqueta, Meta and Guaviare , some of the most affected.

In Colombia, clearing forested regions leads to more hot spots where forest fires are highly likely to follow Credit: Getty Images. This has created another vacuum of other forest monitoring bodies like NGOs and government institutions. Gil says even before lockdown, she received reports that park rangers in the Amazon national parks and protected areas had been receiving death threats from armed groups, warning them to leave their posts. The forest degradation often starts with logging of prized trees such as mahogany and ipe.

The felling and removal of these large trees often damages dozens of neighbouring trees. Once the forest has been logged, the many gaps in the canopy means it becomes much drier due to exposure to the wind and sun, increasing the risk of wildfires spreading inside the forest. So far, climate change policies on the tropics have effectively been focusing on reducing carbon emissions from deforestation only, not accounting for emissions coming from forest degradation.

Lead researcher Dr Erika Berenguer from Lancaster University said: "The impacts of fire and logging in tropical forests have always been largely overlooked by both the scientific community and policy makers who are primarily concerned with deforestation. Yet our results show how these disturbances can severely degrade the forest, with huge amounts of carbon being transferred from plant matter straight into the atmosphere. The research to be published in Global Change Biology on June 3 was carried out by 10 researchers from 11 universities and research institutions in Brazil and the UK.

The second author, Dr Joice Ferreira from Embrapa in Brazil, said: "Our findings also draw attention to the necessity for Brazil to implement more effective policies for reducing the use of fire in agriculture, as fires can both devastate private property, and escape into surrounding forests causing widespread degradation. Bringing fire and illegal logging under control is key to reaching our national commitment to reducing carbon emissions.