Wildlife Habitats
Reforestation helps to restore wildlife habitats that have been destroyed.
It is a long process however. Wildlife habitats are typically diverse ecosystems in delicate balance. Replanting trees alone will not restore the diversity of plants and animals that once existing on deforested land. It is only a start.
Rainforests are particularly important. A common estimate is that about half of the world's animal species live in rainforests. Rainforests are located across the world, generally around the equator, between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. Rainforests cover about 6 percent of the earth's land surface.
In 1800, there were 2.9 billion hectares of tropical forest worldwide. There are 1.5 billion hectares of tropical forest remaining now. We lose 50 species every day - 2 species per hour - to tropical deforestation.
If the current rate of deforestation continues, the world's rainforests will vanish within 100 years and we will have eliminated most of the plant and animal species on the planet.
Rainforests provide an incredible variety of plants in which wildlife can thrive:
- There may be as many as 300 different species of rainforest trees in 1 square kilometer.
- 780 tree species have been found in a 10 hectare plot of Malaysian rainforest -- more than the total number of tree species native to the US and Canada.
- An area of woodland containing 10 species of trees in the UK would contain 180 species in a tropical forest.
- Just 100 hectares of Amazon rainforest can contain up to 1500 different plant species, as many as in the whole of the UK.
Wild Again works to restore natural wildlife habitats in a gradual process as forests regenerate.
