Trees and Forests

Why they are important for the health of the man.

Text and photos by Ernesto Francini

Till now the evolution of the man has been more rapid and fast of the other living kinds on the planet.

From the first " Sapiens Sapiens" man, of which ourselves are the descending forehand, the human being has always evolved, day after day, up to get important goals that the other kinds have not been able even to imagine; thanks to the intelligence of which we are gifted.

Now our human evolution process has arrived on the threshold of a fundamental choice.

If we won't succeed in understanding that the key of our future existence must be sought in the guardianship and comprehension of the nature, of which ourselves are integral part, our future will have jeopardized irremediably.

Many men, many states, have not understood yet that only the protection and the full knowledge of the nature and his many mysteries, today still unknown, relevant to the complexes biological processes in it existing, can help the evolution of the human kind up to the attainment of important goals for our health, in first place the prolongation of our same life and the continuity of our kind.

Around 30 living kinds disappear every day on the planet and this is often due to the destruction of their " habitat " caused by the modern man, which seems more attracted by his personal economic business rather than from his existential future.

We assist every day to the destruction of trees and forests, to the pollution of the atmosphere and the water, without succeed to do anything of good to avoid this; and with them part of our future also goes.

The nature must be protected and studied and not destroyed.

We don't have to forget that every man has the duty to assure a better future to his own descendants and this cannot be absolutely done destroying the nature since we would destroy ourselves.

Every part of living nature that shares with us the existence on the planet has a precise existential purpose, nothing exists for a case.

As the predatory animal, that is at the top of the food chain, helps to maintain healthy the environment also feeding of deceased and sick animals, that contrarily would favor the to spread of illnesses, trees and forests also develop their important function, often forgotten, contributing to purify the air that our lungs breathe, emanating oxygen and absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The tree is a filter that allows us to breathe clean air.

Through the process of the " photosynthesis " it transforms the water and the carbon dioxide in oxygen by using the energy coming from the solar rays that strike the leaves.

This happens because on the surface of the leaves a natural pigment exists, the chlorophyll,

which attracts the solar light.

The birth of the " photosynthesis " coincides with the birth of the life on the planet " Earth".

Every tree produces in average 20-30 liters of oxygen per day, and only the trees produce oxygen.

Every man requires in average of 300 liters of oxygen per day to remain healthy.

The world population consists currently in around 6,3 billion individuals and it has an annual increase equal at 1,3% (around 81 million persons in anymore every year).

The trees return the oxygen that the pollution removes to us and the modern civilization alive more and more in polluted environments.

From 1950 to today the human activity has released to the atmosphere more than 200 billion tons of carbon and the carbonic dioxide, from it derived, now has reached levels never seen in precedence.

To destroy the forests means to decrease the resources of oxygen of the planet and to make more and more unbreathable the air.

In the medicine the benefits of the plants are already evident.

Some studies have been conducted in the Peruvian pluvial forest and they have been shown that the substances extracted by particular plants are able to inhibit the growth of the

" Mycobacterium tubercolosis " the bacterium that provokes the tuberculosis.

From Madagascar tropical forests the Rosa Pervinca originates, from which have been extracted substances that are used for treating the Hodgkin syndrome and the childish leukemia.

Other medicines employees in the care of important illnesses as cancer and AIDS are based on discovered substances in the Amazonian forest.

It's recent the discovery of the Annona Muricata that it seems to possess substances in degree to destroy the carcinogenic cells. In the laboratory tests, actually now performed, it has shown to be able to defeat carcinogenic cells in at least six types of tumor.

And we are only to the principle of the opening of a precious casket that contains all the secret codes for the life on the earth.

The nature in the to give life to us has also furnished the key of the solution of our problems, now it is to us not to disperse this patrimony.

To upset the ecological equilibrium - biological of the planet destroying animal kinds and deforesting whole forests cannot mean anything else other than to anticipate ours same end.

In the last 50 years of life more than 50% of the terrestrial surface covered by the pluvial forests, the only big lung of oxygen of the planet, is gone destroyed and with it a big number of insects, animals, plants have disappeared, subtracting us forever the secret of their life, existential codes that we won't anymore get back.

The intensive and indiscriminate agriculture that pushes to the greatest possible production removing territories to the woods, spreading the uncontrolled use of drugs and fertilizers, reduces the vital spaces of the wild animals, leads to the decadence of the flora and fauna of our countries, makes also the environment not suitable for the human life.

The indiscriminate demolition of trees, to draw out lumber, the uncontrolled housebuilding, that burns whole forests to get spaces to build is creating incalculable damages.

The animals, the plants, the water that have sustained with large extension the cost of our evolution, up today, furnishing substances to us, to survive, cleaned air to breathe, allowing so the existence of the human life on the planet, now they are exhausting them own resources and they have to be mostly protected from us.

If we continue to deforest with this rhythm, it is mathematically simple to realize that all parts of remained pluvial forests could disappear within the next 50 years and I leave to imagine at all the men of good sense what would be the damage for the whole " humanity ".

We don't have now the time anymore to worry us without to do nothing, we have to act.

We do in way that this doesn't happen; we must defend our trees and our forests.

--- Sundown ---