Today, 21st March, is the International Day of Forests. This date was agreed by the UN General Assembly in November last year so that every year there would be one day set aside to “celebrate and raise awareness” of forests.
Forest is a valuable Ecosystem (c) Greenpeace
Sri Lanka is considered as a global Biodiversity Hotspot and the diversity of life in forests contributes much for claiming this prestigious status. The Tropical Wet Lowland Evergreen Rainforests and the cloud forests (tropical moist evergreen forest) in hill country of Sri Lanka is home for about 80% of the Endemic fauna and flora of Sri Lanka. But sadly, majority of the protected areas of Sri Lanka are from Dry Zone despite the remaining forests in Wet Zone and central highlands are severely threatened by Encroachment.
Forget the little creatures inhabit in this habitats. Forests perform lots of valuable Ecosystem Services that helps to regulates lots of systems support humanity and our survival.
First of all, forest regulates the climate. Statistics show that forests store nearly 300 billion tonnes of carbon in their living parts. This is roughly 40 times the annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from fossil fuels. Deforestation accounts for approximately the same amount of climate pollution as all the world’s cars, trucks, trains, planes, and ships combined. So, from a climate point of view it’s better to keep the GHGs where they are by preserving and protecting the forests, says Greenpeace.
Forests also regulate water flow and rainfall. Even in ancient times, the value of forests as a watershed for reservoirs has been identified and an area of forests has been protected. Ancient villagers also deals closely with forests getting lots of resources ranging from firewood to medicine from forests.
But sadly this relationship with forests is now broken and forests are being encroached for various purposes. The forest cover in Sri Lanka continue to goes down. Due to loss of forest habitats, some of the species that are not even discovered will be extinct. Not only that, loosing the Ecosystem services provide by forests, we will also be soon impacted. Rainfall patterns will get irregular, reservoirs will go dry sooner than expected, will loose the ability to face Climate Change – the impacts for ourselves will be too much to bear. But when we recognize our mistake of not protecting forests will be too late.
So let’s all understand the value of forests and protect them – if not for Biodiversity; for our own sake..!!!
