Bow down to the tree

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Today, more and more voices are heard concerned about the state of Nature in individual countries and on the planet Earth as a whole. What happens to Nature, to the climate, what does the “weather in the house” called the Earth depend on? Let's try to look for the answer.

Towards the Climate Summit in Paris

“… There will be a garden. Mark my word in 100 years

and remember … in an artificial garden and among artificial people he interpreted

Humanity will be renewed in the garden and the garden will be straightened - this is the formula."

F. M. Dostoevsky, "Diary of a Writer" Chapter IV "LAND AND CHILDREN", 1876

As long as there is a forest, there is life

This is absolutely obvious and said many times, but few people understand it, and therefore it is worth repeating what a forest is. A forest is not only a community of woody vegetation. A forest is a complex ecosystem, a formed biogeocenosis with complex interrelationships of trees and shrubs, bacteria and fungi, animals and birds.

The forest is the keeper of millions of plant and animal species.

Forest is an oxygen factory. In one sunny day, a hectare of forest absorbs 120-280 kg of carbon dioxide from the air and releases 180-200 kg of oxygen. One medium-sized tree produces enough oxygen for 3 people to breathe. A hectare of coniferous forest retains 40 tons of dust, and deciduous -100 tons.

The forest is the protector of reservoirs, the distributor of water and air flows.

Forests are climate. In summer, during rains and downpours, trees retain moisture on leaves and branches, in autumn - in a layer of fallen leaves, mosses and rhizomes. Trees give moisture gradually by evaporation back to the atmosphere, where clouds form, and then again turn into precipitation in the form of rain. The forest affects the humidity of the air, the amount of precipitation, reduces temperature fluctuations, and lowers the average annual temperature. There is more precipitation in the forest than in treeless areas, and moisture is retained by the forest soil more fully. In winter, forests accumulate snow and do not allow it to melt quickly before the onset of spring, thereby ensuring the existence of springs, guaranteeing an adequate supply of moisture in case of a summer drought. Without forests, water from melted snow and rains quickly flows into the channels of streams and rivers, eroding the soil, forming ravines, and also causing flooding downstream. Moisture, leaving in the rivers, almost does not evaporate back into the air, as a result of which droughts often begin.

Forest - protection from dry and cold winds.

The forest creates fertile soil, which means it provides crops.

The forest feeds people with medicinal wild plants - mushrooms, berries, nuts, herbs.

The forest gives a man a home - a material for houses, furniture. The forest heats the house.

The forest is the beauty of the world, the forest is the place where a person heals the soul and body.

In a word, the forest is the source of human life. And what does a person do with this source? Cuts, burns, sells …

We chop, burn, sell …

reference … Today forests cover about a third of the land - 38 million square kilometers. Only 7% of the forest is planted by man. Half of all forests are tropical. In Russia, the forest is located on 8.5 million square kilometers - over 40% of the country's territory. Most of the world's forest reserves are concentrated in Russia, Canada and Brazil.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations also deals with forest statistics (FAO Forestry statistics), but it is difficult to find real information about the actual state of forests, since the forest is considered solely as a resource for human consumption.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, the area occupied by forests decreased by 50% of forests. The main reasons are forest fires, acid rain, but, most importantly, felling - for the industrial use of timber, for the construction of residential and industrial facilities, for mining sites, for arable land, cattle pastures … This process has accelerated many times due to a sharp increase in the world's population …

For 10 thousand years of human existence, about two-thirds of all forests have disappeared from the face of the Earth. They began to cut down the forest especially a lot in the Middle Ages, when more and more space was required for construction and farmland. And now every year about 13 million hectares of forest are destroyed, and almost half of them are places where no man's foot has ever set foot.

In Russia, 1.2 million hectares of forest are cut down annually. According to the Prosecutor General's Office, another 800 thousand hectares are being destroyed illegally.

According to other data, almost 80% of deforestation in the Russian Federation is carried out illegally. Moreover, wood is mainly sold abroad.

In West Africa or Madagascar, about 90% of the forest has already disappeared. A catastrophic situation has developed in the countries of South America, where more than 40% of the trees have been cut down.

The Amazon rainforest produces 20% of the planet's oxygen, is home to 10% of our biodiversity, is home to unique indigenous peoples, and is the best defense against climate change. But these forests are being cleared at the rate of 16 football fields in the time it takes to read this article. 91% of tropical forests have been cleared for pastures.

Korea is cutting down a five-hundred-year-old forest to build Olympic facilities.

In Ukraine, supporters of the Kiev junta propose to cut down birches as a symbol of Russia

Reforestation in the world is kept at the level of 3-5 million hectares per year. Reforestation in Russia does not exceed 200 thousand hectares per year.

The massive felling of trees leads to dramatic climate changes (colder in winter, hotter in summer). The fertile soil layer is destroyed, as a result, deserts are formed in place of the deforested forests. This happened, for example, in the south of Ukraine, in the Volgograd, Rostov, Astrakhan regions, Kalmykia. Previously, lush grasses, beech, oak groves and forests grew on the virgin lands of the Northern Black Sea region, now there are only bare steppes that are blown by winds from all directions. Only due to slash-and-burn clearing of cultivated areas, the forest area has decreased by 140 million hectares in 10 years. Only 22% of the remaining forests are virgin.

The new Forest Code adopted in Russia gave the forest to the private hands of an "effective owner", which led to annual large-scale forest fires. At the time of the collapse of the USSR, there were 200 thousand foresters and forest workers on the territory of the Russian Federation. After the adoption of the new Forest Code, their number was reduced to 60 thousand. Taking into account the growth of their bureaucratic duties (filling out all kinds of paperwork), the real working time of forest employees fell by an order of magnitude. The salary of an ordinary employee is about 5 thousand rubles, the head of a department is 12 thousand rubles. (data of the head of the forestry department of Greenpeace Yaroshenko). Compare this with the earnings of the top managers of commodity companies, for example, the head of Rosneft Igor Sechin "earns" about 5 million rubles. daily. Russia pays for the killers of Nature much better than its guardians and rescuers. As a result, everyone will pay - with their lives, the death of their children. But for now, the proud "raw material producers" are absolutely sure that water and air will be replaced by money.

According to the Federal Forestry Agency, forest fires are the main cause of damage and destruction of forests in large areas. More than 18 thousand forest fires occur in Russia every year. About 80% of forest fires are caused by humans.

After the catastrophic forest fires of 2010 in the European part of the Russian Federation, the situation is only getting worse. In Belarus, where there are no oligarchs, the forest does not burn, and in Ukraine, where they seized full power, it even came to a forest fire in the Chernobyl zone, which increased the concentration of radionucleides in the atmosphere. Already in September, in a 30-degree heat, forests near Kiev were burning, covering the city with smog.

In Russia, in 2015, about 300 thousand hectares of forest burned down in Transbaikalia; fires around Lake Baikal destroyed almost all national parks and reserves.

Of particular concern is the presence of a significant discrepancy in the data on the forest area between the indicators of forest and land registration. Foresters cite data on the area of forests in Russia, which are more than 100 million hectares higher than the indicators recorded in land registration. It is very likely that there is a double counting, when the areas allocated for the construction of expensive cottages or other commercial purposes are considered by foresters as forests, and their non-forest status is fixed by the land committee.

The threat is hanging over all the protected areas of Russia. A bill was again submitted to the Duma, which allows the seizure of the lands of reserves and national parks under the pretext of losing their environmental value, which was recaptured 2 years ago. Then, within 2 weeks, more than 55,000 Russian citizens sent their appeals and protests to the relevant committee of the Duma.

The bill that is now being submitted for the second reading is the same bill. It will inevitably cause a wave of "accidental" fires in reserves and national parks, because after that it will be possible to prove that the territory has lost its value and build up. … In such a simple way, we can lose what we are rightfully proud of and what needs to be preserved for future generations."

Large-scale forest fires leave behind a mineralized space. All living things perish in the fire - bacteria, fungi, animals, birds. The biocenosis (a community of living organisms and the conditions for their existence) is literally destroyed. The damage from forest fires is complemented by changes in the biocenosis from deforestation. Fires and clearings are slowly overgrown, and the more their area, the longer it takes to restore the biocenosis.

By destroying forests, man causes global shifts in the Earth's climate, in particular, greatly enhances the process of global warming.

Fionova L. K., Moscow