General English Level 5 GELEV5 Unit 02 Topic 04.doc  READING 01b Preserve our forests Old growth forests, once destroyed, can never grow back. Whenever the timber industry clear-fells a forest that has stood for a thousand years, it is gone forever. Trees up to five hundred years old are gone. The habitats of thousands of animals and plants are gone. Only a small percentage of the old growth forests remains. The rate of worldwide forest destruction is increasing, even though we have more than enough plantations to meet all timber needs. Every second, more than an acre of forest disappears from the world. Why are forests important? Up to half the animals and plants on earth live in forests. Forests are important habitats for endangered species – both plants and animals. Some of the plants living in the forest might one day provide cures for deadly diseases. Forests serve many other important purposes. Some forests filter and store water for our cities and towns. All forests provide us with breathable air, giving us oxygen and taking out carbon dioxide. Why, then, do we continue to destroy and waste them? What is happening now? In the past, individual trees were chose for their quality and the rest of the forest left untouched. Today, whole forests are cut down. Rivers and streams are being polluted. In some cases, forests are fire bombed, which kills any remaining plants, and poisoned, which kills any remaining animals. The forests are replaced with plantations of trees, which are all the same species and the same age. These do not provide the same diversity of habitat for animals and plants. Most trees are cut down to be chipped and turned into paper. This destruction does not provide lots of jobs. The large companies who control the industry use machines rather than people. Logging is not even profitable in some countries, and governments often need to support logging companies. This means the people are paying for the destruction of their own forests. What is happening now? Nowadays a much more profitable use of forests is tourism. More and more people are appreciating our natural environment. In their holidays people want to go to natural and untouched places. In their spare time, people want to go bushwalking, white water rafting and fishing. They can do all of these things in forests. Preserving forests could create thousands of jobs and millions of dollars through tourism. There is no need to destroy any more old growth forests. They are not only important for our water supply and our wildlife, but also have great economic potential through tourism. We need to protect and preserve our forests. 70 QUESTLANGUAGE