Take a quick look around your school and home and identify all the things that come from forests: the paper in the book you are reading, desks and tables, doors and windows, the dyes that colour your clothes, spices in your food, the cellophane wrapper of your toffee, tendu leaf in bidis, gum, honey, coffee, tea and rubber. Do not miss out the oil in chocolates, which comes from sal seeds, the tannin used to convert skins and hides into leather, or the herbs and roots used for medicinal purposes. Forests also provide bamboo, wood for fuel, grass, charcoal, packaging, fruits, flowers, animals, birds and many other things. In the Amazon forests or in the Western Ghats, it is possible to find as many as 500 different plant species in one forest patch.
A lot of this diversity is fast disappearing. Between 1700 and 1995, the period of industrialisation, 13.9 million sq km of forest or 9.3 per cent of the world’s total area was cleared for industrial uses, cultivation, pastures and fuelwood.
Language: English
Science, MCQs