Just take a look at the little and big things around you. What do you see? Newspapers, books, wooden furniture, medicines, and what not! Has it occurred to you that most of them were once part of rainforests? Wood pulp, the chief raw material used in the paper industry, is obtained by chopping off thousands of rainforest trees every day. A large area of the Sumatran rainforest has been cleared and turned into a plantation of a single plant species just for wood pulp!
Animals of the rainforests are not spared, too. Leather industries that solely rely on animal skin, and the food sector that finds a promising economy in the bushmeat market, have caused the extinction of hundreds of species of forest animals.
Animals function as vital seed dispersers within the ecosystem. Massive hunting and poaching of these ‘seed spreaders’ affect the wildlife population and cause an imbalance in the overall richness of the plant and animal density.
Picture Credit : Google
