Activity 1C

Deforestation Blues

Learner Objectives

After completing this activity, learners should be able to:

• Define and describe deforestation and reforestation. Be able to express which forests (tropical rainforests or U.S. forests) are likely to be deforested and which are likely to be reforested.
  
  
• Understand, compare, and contrast tropical deforestation rates with general forest volume trends in the United States.
  
  

Preparation

Make copies of Activity Sheet 1C.1 for every student.

Doing the Activity

Write the word deforestation on a chalkboard or flip chart. Help the group members define the term in their own words. Write a definition that the group agrees with. Technically:

Deforestation is a complete change in land use from forest to agriculture or urban use. Land is considered to be deforested when less than 10 percent of the tree cover remains.

Write the word deforestation again. Draw a circle around it. Ask students to describe, in four or five words, how a deforested area would look. Some examples might include "No pinecones on the ground," "Lots of parking space," or "No shade for slugs." Write these phrases around the word deforestation, circle them, and connect them with a line. When you are done, you'll have a burst of descriptions about deforestation.

Write the word reforestation. Help the group define the term in their own words. Explain that in the United States, we deforested lands during the 1700s and 1800s to make room for farm fields. Now, most deforestation occurs when cities and towns expand and roads are built. Since about 1920, the area of forest land in the U.S. has stabilized, and even slightly increased. Despite common misperceptions about harvesting, almost no forest land has been lost due to forest harvesting in the U.S. over the past half century.

Reforestation is the regrowing of trees on areas that once contained them.

Write the word reforestation again. Draw a circle around it, and ask students to describe in phrases how a reforested area might look. Some examples might include "Small trees getting bigger," "Blueberries abound," or "Rabbits hide in the shrubs." Write these phrases around the word reforestation, circle them, and connect them with a line. When you are done, you'll have a burst of descriptions about reforestation.

Ask students which forests are more likely to be deforested, U.S. forests or tropical rainforests. Explain that tropical rainforests are being cleared each year. There are many different causes, including removing trees to plant crops, graze animals, or build cities. (See Chapter Two for more activities related to causes of tropical deforestation.)

Hand out Activity Sheet 1C.1 to students. Ask them to complete the calculations and questions. Review the correct answers in a large group. You also may wish to stimulate a discussion about forest management in the United States using the handout.

Evaluating Results

The answers for Activity Sheet 1C.1 are as follows:

1. Asia.
   
   
2. Africa.
   
   
3. Yes. The United States has lost about 370 million acres of forest since the 1600s. About 34 percent of the United States is currently forested, approximately 68 percent of the forested area that existed at the time of settlement.
   
   
4. During the 1920s, more wood was harvested than grown. Things began to change around 1952, when forest growth was greater than harvest. Net growth has exceeded harvest every year since. In addition, lands once cleared for farming, which have since been abandoned, are increasingly returning to a forested condition.
   If current trends continue, the United States will have more timber in the decades ahead.
   
   

Extension

In their own communities, students can find examples of reforestation and deforestation. As deforestation examples, shopping malls may have been built over forests; highways may been built through woodlands; cotton crops may have been planted where bottomland hardwoods once thrived. Reforestation examples include thriving forests on abandoned farmland in the northeastern United States; extensive stands of Sitka spruce on lands that had long supported only grass and sheep in Scotland and Ireland; and dense forests of acacia and other hardwoods on abandoned mine land in Malaysia.

Visit an urban deforestation site, a farm field, and/or a reforestation site. Questions to stimulate discussion include:

• (Urban deforestation site) — Why were the trees and other plants removed here? What needs were filled by doing so? Is this (urban expansion) happening in other parts of this area? What will happen to the area's wildlife and plants if we deforest these sites? What will happen to people if we don't build roads, shopping malls, and housing?
  
  
• (Farm field) — Why were the trees removed here? What needs were being met by doing so? What happened to the animals and plants here? What would happen to people without these crops?
  
  
• (Reforestation site) — Who do you think made the decision to replant or let trees and plants regrow here? What do you think this area will look like in 10 years? 50 years? If we left this forest alone, would it continue to change? Are humans giving up anything by reforesting this area?
  
  

Values and Issues

Explain to students that scientists estimate that about 40 percent of the original tropical forests in the world have been lost. On the island of Haiti, they have disappeared completely. Read the following quote to students. It was written by Christopher Columbus to Ferdinand and Isabella, describing the island of Haiti:

"Its lands are high; there are in it very many sierras and very lofty mountains. ... All are most beautiful, or a thousand shapes; all are accessible and filled with trees of a thousand kinds and tall, so that they seem to touch the sky. I am told that they never lose their foliage, and this I can believe, for I saw them as green and lovely as they are in Spain in May, and some of them were flowering, some bearing fruit, and some at another stage, according to their nature."³

Discuss this quote with students. What could have led to the near-complete loss of rainforests on Haiti? How does this affect the people who live there now? Are the same animals found on Haiti now as were in the days of Columbus?

³ Excerpted from Julie Sloan Denslow and Christine Padoch. 1988. People of the Tropical Rain Forest. Berkeley: University of California Press.