Every day thousands of acres of old growth forests are cut down and turned into products ranging from plywood and paneling to pulp and paper. In the Amazon, mahogany tree logging accounts for the deforestation of an area nearly the size of Belgium each year. Tropical rain forests are by far the richest habitat on Earth. As many as 30 million species of plants and animals , more than half of all life forms, live in tropical rain forests. Sixty-eight percent of the 250,000 species of the world's flowering plants are found in the world's tropical rain forests, which are being destroyed at an estimated annual rate of 41.7 million acres worldwide.
Deforestation causes a loss of habitat.
Experts agree that the number-one cause of extinction is habitat destruction. Quite simply, when habitat is reduced, species disappear. Distinguished scientists estimate an average of 137 species of life forms are driven into extinction every day, or 50,000 each year. Human development accelerates the loss of species by as much as 1,000 times the natural extinction rate. While extinction is a natural process, the alarming rate of extinction today, comparable only to the extinction of the dinosaurs, is specifically human-induced and unprecedented.