How does deforestation affect animals?

To give you an idea of what deforestation does to animals, I’d like you to see the featured image below. It’s a cleared forest. This is a classic example of Habitat Fragmentation.

The Earth is covered with forests that host a wide and diverse community of plants and organisms. 31% of the Earth is roughly covered with forest and about 80% of the world’s biodiversity is housed in this forest ecosystem.

Deforestation has many detrimental effects on animals.

Habitats are necessary for all animal or plant species to successfully be able to carry out their life cycles (grow and reproduce).

Deforestation unfortunately destroys habitats making it very difficult for animals to live. Forests are a source of food and shelter for animals and, once there are no more forests available to live in, they are at risk of being hunted down, dying out from starvation or not being able to live long enough to reproduce.

Small or fragmented habitats may no longer be suitable to maintain a large population of a particular animal and the small population may have trouble breeding successfully. If breeding does occur, there is a very good chance that the biodiversity will be reduced due to the size of the population in that habitat.

Habitat loss is a serious issue for those animals which solely live in forests.

So, if the forests start to disappear there is an increased likelihood that the species which rely on them will also start to disappear, and eventually become extinct.

Multiple solutions can be made to reduce deforestation such as restrictions, laws and protests. However, a better way would be to protect the native forests by providing your support to Nideport’s initiative: Saving your money while protecting 1m2 of land under ecological restoration.

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