BUSH DOWN BUSH DOWN

How does deforestation damage land and ecosystems?

Deforestation 🌳❌ means cutting down or clearing large areas of forest. This practice has a serious impact on the land and natural ecosystems. Forests play an important role in maintaining ecological balance, supporting wildlife, and protecting the soil. When forests are destroyed, many environmental problems begin to arise.

A major consequence of deforestation is soil erosion. The roots of trees hold the soil firmly in place. When trees are cut down, the soil becomes loose and can be blown away by rain 🌧️ or wind 🌬️. This reduces soil fertility and makes the land less suitable for farming 🌾.

Deforestation also damages ecosystems. Forests provide homes for countless animals, birds 🐦, insects 🐜, and plants 🌱. When trees are cut down, these species lose their natural habitats. Many animals are forced to move to new areas, while others cannot survive. This leads to a loss of biodiversity, which weakens the balance of ecosystems.

Another major consequence is the increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Trees absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen 🌿. When forests are destroyed, there are fewer trees available to absorb this gas, which contributes to climate change and global warming 🌡️. As temperatures rise, weather patterns can become more extreme.

Deforestation also affects the water cycle 💧. Trees help regulate rainfall and maintain soil moisture. Without forests, areas can experience less rainfall, droughts, or floods.

Human activities such as agricultural expansion, deforestation, and urban development are the main causes of deforestation. To protect land and ecosystems, it is important to plant more trees 🌱, protect existing forests, and promote sustainable land use.

By protecting forests 🌳 and using natural resources responsibly, we can protect ecosystems and maintain a healthy environment for future generations. 🌎✨

Brazil’s Amazon rainforest destruction is at its highest rate in more than a decade

Deforestation and carbon stock in state forests in Côte d’Ivoire: The case of the Haut-Sassandra classified forest

Abstract

This study assesses the impact of deforestation, primarily due to the expansion of cocoa plantations, on carbon stocks in the Haut-Sassandra Classified Forest (HSCF) in Côte d’Ivoire. The methodology was based on the processing of a 2019 Landsat image and a forest inventory in 117 plots of 625 m² each, respectively, to map land use in the HSCF and quantify biomass and sequestered carbon…

Deforestation and carbon stock in state forests in Côte d’Ivoire: The case of the Haut-Sassandra classified forest

Ya’ll I found an awesome replacement for Google that plants a tree for each search and donates profits towards protecting the environment! It’s also entirely powered by renewable energy sources, and they produce more renewable energy than they need so they can push it onto the grid and help phase out fossil fuels!

It’s called Ecosia and it’s really cool! If you’re interested they have an app you can download and you can also make it your default browser on pc instead of chrome :))

With only 3 women left, an Amazon tribe faced extinction. An unexpected birth now brings hope

Pugapia and her daughters Aiga and Babawru lived for years as the only surviving members of the Akuntsu, an Indigenous people decimated by a government-backed push to develop parts of the Amazon rainforest. As they advanced in age without a child to carry on the line, many expected the Akuntsu to vanish when the women died.

That changed in December, when Babawru — the youngest of the three, in her 40s — gave birth to a boy. Akyp’s arrival brought hope not just for the Akuntsu line but also for efforts to protect the equally fragile rainforest.

“This child is not only a symbol of the resistance of the Akuntsu people, but also a source of hope for Indigenous peoples,” said Joenia Wapichana, president of Brazil’s Indigenous protection agency, known as Funai. “He represents how recognition, protection and the management of this land are extremely necessary.”

Protecting Indigenous territories is widely seen as one of the most effective ways to curb deforestation in the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest and a key regulator of global climate. Researchers warn that continued forest loss could accelerate global warming. A 2022 analysis by MapBiomas, a network of nongovernmental groups tracking land use, found Indigenous territories in Brazil had lost just 1% of native vegetation over three decades, compared with 20% on private land nationwide.

In Rondonia state, where the Akuntsu dwell, about 40% of native forest has been cleared, and what remains untouched is largely within conservation and Indigenous areas. The Akuntsu’s land stands out in satellite images as an island of forest surrounded by cattle pasture as well as soy and corn fields.

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The Federal proposal to chop down a forest in Oregon is going to be fascinating to watch because Oregon has some of the most extensive land use regulations and procedures in the entire country. There is a “Land Use Board of Appeals” which only hears appeals related to land use matters- such as deforestation- which have already gone through application, public hearing, and board/hearings officer review.

Literally one of the only States that has the infrastructure to draw this out through legal mud. And I hope they do.

Today’s birds are up to 72% smaller than those of 80 years ago in Indigenous territories

…the environmental and cultural impact of the ongoing loss of biodiversity.

The Tsimane’ people live deep within the Bolivian Amazon rainforest. This community of some 16,000 people has been protecting the Tsimane’ Indigenous Territory, the Pilón Lajas Community Land of Origin, and its surrounding areas for centuries, long before the state began to do so. When the elders of the community were just children, they saw macaws and Amazonian guans (Penelope jacquacu) flying over the Maníqui River basin. Today, they themselves acknowledge seeing only ruddy pigeons (Patagioenas subvinacea) and giant cowbirds (Molothrus oryzivorus), birds that are much more homogeneous and urban, and which have little or no connection to their territories.

This realization is not unique to Bolivia. An international study, coordinated by the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ​​documents that, between 1940 and 2020, the average body mass of birds in 10 Indigenous and local communities on three continents declined by up to 72%.Fifteen years ago, Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares lived with this community to work on his PhD and get to know a group of people who understand the implications of the climate crisis better than any scientist. There, he began to hear, time and again, the elders’ sorrow at no longer seeing the birds they had grown up with. “The loss for them was very profound and went far beyond a mere number,” explains the Spanish ethnobiologist and lead author of the study, published in the journal Oryx, in a phone call.

For the Indigenous communities who were interviewed, birds often hold immeasurable symbolic and ceremonial significance. Thus, ritual dances, songs, and place names are at risk of being lost in the face of this loss of biodiversity. Yolanda López Maldonado, PhD in Natural Sciences, fondly cherishes videos from her childhood of herself imitating the mating ritual of the thick-knee (Burhinus bistriatus) as part of traditional Mayan dances. In them, a young girl moves her skirt as if feathers were hanging from it and “pecks” with her mouth alongside a partner in a beautiful and symbolic game. “If the thick-knee disappears, our culture is disappearing in a way. Passing this tradition on to younger generations is an enormous challenge if these birds are no longer seen in our territory,” she laments.

I don’t know what to put here; sorry this is a rant

So, I’m not the first to say this (And hopefully won’t be the last to), but mega corps taking down trees is horrible. But, you don’t get it put into perspective always with a video that’s thousands of feet in the air (Or whatever height).

But, if you go, loop whatever song or sounds that make you feel something, not strength, or pride, or happiness. But melancholy, a song that makes you realize the world isn’t sunshine and rainbows. And go onto a game like Valheim, or any game where you can cut down trees and they’ll stay there as logs, but Valheim especially. And go deforest a whole area, don’t cut down any ‘rarer’ or stronger trees, only the common ones, and listen to that song on repeat. Don’t cut down the logs into wood pieces for crafting or building, but stop. And look around. See the destruction that was created. See the rarer or more special trees (Like in Valheim its Oaks and Birch) standing there, maybe a few fell and that’s fine, but keep most of them up. and you realize the scale of it all. If you want to, you can cut down the baby trees too, but I’d keep them just so when you stop to look around, you realize the rich and the young (If any are left) are usually the only ones standing after.

Any animals you see? Don’t go hunt them down, but if they’re in range or trying to attack, just kill them. No hesitation, no mercy.

If your inventory gets full? Throw out, not the wood, but any animal pieces like hide, meat, or feathers. Let it just stay on the ground and maybe pick it up once, and if, you put the wood away.

It gets rather surreal, at least to me, when I got bored and found out that this is a very dystopian way to see everything, and how it looks like to a degree. Of course it’d'n’t be hyper realistic, but who cares? Art is art, whether you like it or not. And destruction is destruction.

# What if the Earth’s lungs just…stopped? 🌍💔 We call forests our planet’s lungs. Not because they breathe, but because they’re locked in a vital exchange. They inhale the carbon dioxide we create, and exhale the oxygen we need to live.

Self-Transcendence

Mostly self-transcendence talks are a bluff but some look but some seem genuine because they are really about changing what “self” refers to, not eliminating selfhood as such. Most talk misses that distinction, so it overclaims.

A self, in the minimal sense, is a center of orientation where information is indexed to a locus, actions are selected relative to interests, threats, and affordances. This is not a belief, not a story, not an ego-image. It is a functional requirement for any organism that acts. Remove that, and you do not get enlightenment. You get paralysis or death. So any claim that the self can disappear entirely while cognition and agency remain is incoherent. That is the bluff.

Now the narrower sense in which some talk is not a bluff. What can change is not the existence of a self, but the contents and rigidity of self-models. Metzinger is precise here saying that the organism runs a self-model, but mistakes it for a thing. What can dissolve is the reification, not the function. You can weaken identification with autobiographical narrative, social roles, moral self-images, defensive postures. You can reduce compulsive self-reference. You can stop treating every perception as a referendum on “who I am.” That is real, measurable, and psychologically intelligible. But notice that none of this removes the indexical “for-me.” It only thins the drama around it.

Where most spiritual and therapeutic language cheats is by sliding between levels. It starts with a legitimate claim that “the narrative ego is constructed and unstable” and then quietly upgrades it to an illegitimate one with“there is no self at all.” That jump feels liberating because it promises escape from responsibility, vulnerability, and finitude. But structurally, nothing has been escaped. The organism still evaluates, still prefers, still avoids harm, still acts from a center. The supposed transcendence is just unnoticed self-reference operating without explicit self-concept.

There is also a second, rarer sense in which “transcendence” can be used carefully, namely, expansion of scope, not erasure. Spinoza fits here. The self does not vanish; its frame widens. One’s interests become less parochial, less reactive, more aligned with necessity. But again, this is not selflessness. It is a reorganization of what counts as “mine.” The index remains. Only the map changes.

Most talk of self-transcendence is false because it promises the impossible. The versions that are true are modest, technical, and frankly disappointing to anyone shopping for metaphysical fireworks. They describe deflation, not disappearance. De-centering, not deletion.

The self cannot be transcended only misunderstood, overinflated, or made transparent.

My proudest achievement. made for my environmental science class

Coffee-driven deforestation is making it harder to grow coffee, watchdog group says

😇 Taboo against harming strangler fig spirits protects forests in Indonesian Borneo

Taboo against harming strangler fig spirits protects forests in Indonesian Borneo

Vanishing wildlife pushes Brazilian mosquitoes toward human blood

…who live in the area.

In a forested area along the Brazilian coastline, mosquitoes that previously fed on a variety of hosts are increasingly turning to human blood.

Scientists say the destruction of the ecosystem’s biodiversity is forcing mosquitoes to find new sources to quench their thirst.

The strong preference for humans could lead to the transmission of more viral diseases and adverse health outcomes for people who live in the area, the researchers said.

Why are mosquitoes increasingly targeting humans as a food source?

Stretching along the Brazilian coastline, the Atlantic Forest is home to hundreds of species of birds, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and fish. However, due to human expansion, only about a third of the forest’s original area remains intact.

As human presence drives animals from their habitats, mosquitoes are increasingly targeting humans as a food source, a new study published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution has found.

“This is crucial [research] because, in an environment like the Atlantic Forest with a great diversity of potential vertebrate hosts, a preference for humans significantly enhances the risk of pathogen transmission,” said co-author Dr Sergio Machado, a researcher who studies microbiology and immunology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

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When Forests Fall Plateau Suffers

When Forests Fall Plateau Suffers is no longer a poetic expression but a lived reality across many communities in Plateau State. Once admired for its rolling green hills, cool climate, flowing streams, productive farmlands, and rich biodiversity, the state is now confronting the painful consequences of environmental neglect. Forests that once regulated water flow, sustained agriculture, supported…

When Forests Fall Plateau Suffers

Afro-descendant territories slash deforestation, lock in carbon, study shows

Gonzalo Ortuño López–28 Nov 2025

• New research documents the positive impacts that Afro-descendant populations have had on tropical ecosystems in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Suriname.
• The study found that deforestation rates are between 29% and 55% lower in Afro-descendant lands than in protected areas.
• This is the first scientific study to employ statistical, geographical and historical data to assess the contribution of Afro-descendant communities in conservation.
• According to the researchers, Afro-descendant populations and their good practices are at risk due to a lack of legal recognition, invisibility of their contributions, and extractive activities in their territories.