International Day of Forests 2019 : Some Facts About Forests You Need To Know!

The International Day of Forests is celebrated on 21 March every year to raise awareness of the importance of forests. Forests are the things which keep us alive the air we breath comes from these trees or forest so it is important to take steps which can keep these most valuable things in our earth for the benefit of current and future generation. It is established on the 21st day of March, by resolution of the United Nations General Assembly on November 28, 2012.

Different countries now joined the campaign and encouraged to take different efforts to organize local, national, international activities involving forest and trees, such as tree planting on International Day of Forests.

This year the campaign for the Internationa Day of Forests is Learn to love forests. It draws the attention of people towards the importance of education at all levels in achieving sustainable forest management. Healthy forests mean better world with healthy, resilient communities and prosperous economies.

Some Facts About Forests-

Here are the facts you need to know about forests to get aware of the situation our forests dealing.

Forests cover about four billion hectares (16 million square miles). That represents about 30 percent of Earth’s land surface or eight percent of its total surface area. Ten countries hold about two-thirds the world’s forest cover, led by Russia (7.8 million square kilometers), Brazil (4.8m sq km), Canada (3.1m sq km), the United States (3m sq km), China (1.8m sq km) and Democratic Republic of the Congo (1.8m sq km).
Every minute we lose 60 Football fields worth of forests to deforestation that’s one football field lost every second.
150 species a day become extinct because of habitat loss.
There are over 60,000 species tree species on this planet.
Four primary drivers of the tree loss are Beef, soy, palm oil and timber.
1.6 billion people on this planet depend on forests for their daily livelihood.
Cutting down trees releases the same amount of annual carbon in o the atmosphere as all cars, trucks, planes and the trains in the world combined.
20 % of the planet’s oxygen is produced in the Amazon rainforest.
More than 80% of the earth’s natural forests have already been destroyed.
China has planted the biggest artificial forest in the world to stop the spread of the Gobi desert and plans to expand it to 2,800 miles by2074.
Forests growth in the US has exceeded harvest since the1940s, and the USA has more trees now than at any time in the past 100 years.
Jadav Payeng a man from India alone planted a forest bigger than Central Park to save Majuli Island in northern India from erosion. The forest is now home to a large amount of stray wildlife.
California uses prisoners to fight forest fires and it reduces their sentence, gets them outside, and pays better than typical prison jobs.
A quarter of all modern medicines comes from tropical forests plant, including two-thirds of all cancer-fighting drugs.
World’s forests removing an estimated 2.1 Gigatonnes of Carbon dioxide annually.
The world is witnessing a net loss of 3.3 million hectares of forests area a year.
Almost 900 million people, mostly in developing countries are involved in woodfuel and charcoal production. 2.4 billion people worldwide.
Trees in forests are natural aqueducts, redistributing up to 95% of the water they absorb to where it’s needed most. They hold water in the soil, preventing erosion.