Want to help combat climate change? Look no further than your nearest woodland.
If your yard backs up to a forest or there’s a stretch of woods near your workplace or in your community, you have a role to play in supporting forest restoration. Here’s why that matters—and what to do about it.
Photo credit: Erik Drost
Why Forests and Forest Restoration Matter
In Ohio and Kentucky, forests have long been intertwined with ecological health and social wellbeing. Per The Nature Conservancy, these are just some of the immense benefits that forests provide:
Forests offer habitat for a huge variety of plants and wildlife, fostering biodiversity.
Globally, forests are home to more than 80% of the earth’s terrestrial biodiversity. Ohio’s hardwood forests alone support more than 62 species of trees; hundreds of shrub species; dozens of mammals large and small; and countless songbirds, soil microbes, and insects, including native pollinators. Biodiversity is critical for the healthy functioning of ecosystems.
Forests protect water quality.
Woodlands absorb rainfall and filter out sediments and pollutants, which helps clean rivers and lakes, including sources of drinking water for humans and wildlife. These processes also help prevent soil erosion and mitigate flooding risks.
Photo credit: Darshan Simha
Forests help clean the air and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Forests absorb around 30% of all carbon emissions generated by burning fossil fuels, meaning they play a critical role in combating climate change. They also filter pollutants from the air, helping to protect the health of humans and wildlife.
Forests play a vital role in our human communities and our individual wellbeing.
From hiking to birding, foraging, hunting, and so much more, forests offer countless opportunities for recreation and support hundreds of thousands of jobs. Globally, approximately 1 billion people depend on forests for food and plant products.
All of this speaks to the value of forest restoration. By taking steps to revive and sustain our forests, we help preserve these benefits for all living creatures.
Photo credit: Dan Keck
Threats To Today’s Forests
To understand the state of forests today, we need to look back to European colonization. As they cleared space for farmland and fueled iron furnaces, settlers quickly degraded or destroyed forests across Ohio and Kentucky. By the early 1900s, 90% of Ohio’s original forest had been destroyed.
Similar trends have occurred and are ongoing globally. Each year, more than 24 million acres of forest—an area twice the size of Costa Rica—is destroyed.
A number of factors cause deforestation, including logging, changes in human land use, pollution, the proliferation of invasive species, and climate change impacts such as droughts and wildfires. Globally, 2.2 billion acres of land now have less than a quarter of the biomass they could support.
Here’s a glimmer of good news: Increasingly, people and organizations across the globe are working to restore our forests. Those efforts have picked up steam as the consequences of climate change become more apparent.
Understory native species planted by Our Land Organics