Congress,The Act to Save America’s Forests willbe decided on September 2001 to see if itwill go into affect. The law would helpreduce clearcutting in many nationalforests and save the endangered speciesliving in that habitat.At one time America was oncecovered with one billion acres oftowering primeval forests. These forestswere teeming with plants and animals, atreasure-trove of evolutionary diversityand biological richness. Giant,centuries-old trees had trunks more than15 feet wide and soared to the height of30 story skyscrapers. In the past 500 years, aggressivelogging and development have destroyedover 95% of these original forests. Thelast remnants of America's virgin andnatural forests, with their unique andirreplaceable life, reside mostly on ournational forests. The 155 national forestscover a large portion of our country, anarea about the size of California Oregonand Washington combined, and stretchfrom Alaska to Florida. Most states haveat least one national forest. Deforestation is occurring on amassive scale in our national forests andis clearly visible from space. Satellitephotos show that the rate of clearcuttingin places like the Olympic NationalForest of Washington state equals orexceeds the destruction in the Brazilianrainforests. Clearcutting describes loggingwhich cuts down all or most of the treesin a forest area, destroying the forest. AWorld Resources Institute reportconcluded that the last of the originalforests in this country will be lost withoutimmediate action. Many improvements would comeout of this new act. Many more specieswould live and not so many wouldbecome extinct. An example, would be,that the spotted owl eats voles, a smallrodent. Voles eat fungi and disperse thefungi spores in their waste which thegrown in the ground on the roots of thegiant trees. Each organism plays a rolein the healthy functioning of the forest. Landslides and flooding would not be asserver, due to the fact that, for...
