Deforestation Impacts Everyone

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Forests play a hugely significant role on planet Earth. They act as "Earth's lungs." (WWF, n.d.) These "lungs" purify the air trapped in the atmosphere and are positively involved in the daily lives of all living things. However, the environment's harmful cigarette, deforestation, permanently removes the forest cover from an area and transforms that previously forested land to other uses. Deforestation is the primary cause of losing these valuable forests and it is occurring at an unimaginably rapid pace. According to the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF), "The lungs of the planet are increasingly being likened to those of a heavy smoker." (WWF, n.d.) Specifically relating to deforestation, there is a rare rainforest that is known as the "largest coastal temperate rainforest on the planet." (The Nature Conservancy, 2014) This rainforest is 6.4 million hectares and it stretches along the coast of British Columbia. (Bethel, 2014) It is the Great Bear Rainforest. It has a variety of grizzly bears, salmon, and timber trees. However, deforestation in the ecosystem of the Great Bear Rainforest has resulted in the adverse environmental impact of biodiversity loss to bear, fish, and plant, species.
“The Great Bear Rainforest is home to over 2,500 salmon runs.” (Temple, 2005) At the moment, the Pacific salmon is the evident species inhabiting the forest. Salmon are keystone species. This means that they play a vital part towards the ecosystem together as a “critical food source for many wildlife species and as an upstream vector in the distribution of marine-deprived nutrients through the forest.” (David Suzuki Foundation, 2005) When this forest gets cut down, the entire ecology of the nearby water bodies drastically changes in a negative m...

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...ase-stress-in-grizzly-bears-linked-with-salmon-shortages/)

Spirit bear competition (http://www.isfoundation.com/news/creatures/spirit-bear) http://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/regions/northamerica/canada/placesweprotect/great-bear-rainforest.xml (this is for the intro) http://www.newsroom.gov.bc.ca/2014/01/great-bear-rainforest-milestone-reached.html (FOR INTRO 6.4 MILLION HECTARES)

VISUALS:
1. Percentage diagram of clear cutting in the Great Bear Rainforest (Beside biodiversity loss of plant species paragraph) (from DSF source)
2. Percentage diagram of fish protection (beside or near the fish paragraph) (From DSF source)
3. From the ground up - cirle diagram of stats/percents of entire forest (goes near intro)
4. Salmon map (Salmon for Parks Chris T. Darimont et al.
Figure 2 )
http://www.raincoast.org/wp-content/uploads/SalmonforParks_Oct2010Darimont_etal.pdf

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