Earth Home To 3 Trillion Trees, Half As Many As When Human Civilization Arose

sciencehabit writes: Earth today supports more than 3 trillion trees—eight times as many as we thought a decade ago. But that number is rapidly shrinking, according to a global tree survey released today (abstract). We are losing 15 billion trees a year to toilet paper, timber, farmland expansion, and other human needs. So even though the total count is large, the decline is "a cause for concern," says Tom Spies, a forest ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service in Corvallis, Oregon, who was not involved with the work.

Comments

Toilet paper and timber?

[ArmoredDragon]

Last I checked, trees earmarked for that purpose were specifically grown for that purpose, and aren't wild trees (thus when they're harvested, they don't count as a lost tree anymore than eating a potato counts as a lost potato.)

Namely, these kinds of farm raised trees:

https://photos.travelblog.org/...

Those kind of trees are even preferred over wild trees because their growth pattern is much better suited to their end purpose.

Re:Toilet paper and timber?

[EvilSS]

That's probably true in the US, at least from what I've heard, but is it true everywhere? China? India? South America?

Not sure about India and South America, but China is planting trees for paper production. They don't have a choice. They literally don't have enough natural forests left to support their paper production these days. China has become the world's largest producer of paper. They have been importing timber and pulp from all over the world for a while now but even that isn't sustainable forever. Their low prices have been kept that way by government subsidies for now.

There is a pretty good article on China's paper business on Pulitzer Center.

Re:Three Seashells

[Firethorn]

would translate into a smaller footprint required to produce.

This brings up an important point that detracts from the article. Toilet paper and timber today are overwhelmingly produced from farmed trees. Timber is, generally speaking, sequestering the wood. Discounting the costs of processing and shipping, toilet paper is actually renewable. After all, after you harvest a field to make into TP, you simply plant more trees.

Remove them, and you might run into the problem seen by African Rhinos - where complete bans on their horns actually increases their vulnerability to poachers, because you've removed much of the economics of having them, thus reducing money available to protect them and even breed more of them.

Lions aren't easy to farm either, but at least the Chinese are doing it.