Deforestation - local & global

Just as we announce the planting of three new jointly-funded street trees in Millmark Grove in this planting round (see last post), sadly we have to report the loss of two existing mature street trees in the same road, one lost to disease, the other a casualty of the high winds in the last few weeks:

We really are having to work hard to replace these losses as established trees come to the end of their lives, fall victim to disease or succumb to storm damage. 

Global deforestation

On a larger scale entirely, new technology is now making it possible to track the loss of the planet's rain forests in near real-time. Using satellite images and data gathered at ground level, startling statistics are waking us up to the scale of the losses: between 2000 and 2012, 230 million hectares of forest have been felled, that's:

230,000,000 hectares

... which, put in more comprehensible terms, is the equivalent of 50 football fields of trees being cut down, every minute of every day over the past 12 years. That is truly staggering.  

The link below takes you to the item:

BBC Science & Environment: "New online tools tracks tree losses in near real-time"