DEFORESTATION IN AUSTRALIA

Veronika Sudková

Australia is said to be one of the worst developed countries in the world defined by broadscale deforestation. Australia is known for wiping out long landscapes and endangered forests. During this process, we do not only lose something precious as trees, which are very important for our lives, we do lose animals. Threatened animals, which are powerless, unlike us they cannot decide so much about our planet. A fact which made me sick when I found out is that we have already cleared out half of our forest cover during the last two centuries.

I have read an analysis, which has discovered that yet forests and natural vegetation continue to be cleared at a staggering rate. Globally, some 177,000 square kilometers are lost each year, which is equivalent to 50 football fields every minute.

Mainly in Malaysia and Indonesia trees of the forests are being cut down for making palm oil. Palm oil can be found these days in almost everything, from food to shampoo. From my point of view, it is great to support forests by not buying products that contain palm oil. Of course another big problem, which probably has come to your mind, is paper and wood. A crazy amount of trees are felled for our unnecessary human needs. As a student I can confirm that we use so many totally unnecessary papers for almost every subject we have. Some teachers strictly require that in their lessons we have printed papers every week. Personally, I love paper, I can study so much better from papers, than just from my laptop and I love writing as well. However, I try to save as much paper I can to help this enormous issue we as people have. When I am shopping groceries I try to look at foodstuffs if they contain palm oil, just to make sure not to support this business. In fact, we are against ourselves. We need forests, we need to breathe to live, so shouldn't we be more careful what we support and do?