We humans live as if trees don’t matter, as if they are just another resource to use whenever, however and as fast as we want.

Nothing could be further from the truth. We need trees. Indeed, we need trees to survive.

Trees create oxygen that we need to breathe. Trees are an essential component of critical ecosystems such as forests. If the forest ecosystems collapse, our species will also collapse since we require healthy forests to survive. For example, forests maintain the massive reservoirs that we need to supply water to our cities and towns.

And if that was not enough, trees are brilliant carbon sinks - nature’s very own carbon capture and storage technology. We desperately need more trees if we are to mitigate the effects of climate overheating. Without trees, the planet is likely to become uninhabitable for us.

Professor Tom Crowther (ETH Zürich University) says, “forest restoration isn’t just one of our climate change solutions, it is overwhelmingly the top one.”

Despite our obvious reliance on trees to survive, we are chopping them down at a truly alarming rate. And for what? Majestic old growth forests are often cut down to make tissue paper and photocopy paper – it is a travesty.

My country, Australia, is one of the worst deforestation culprits.
Of the top ten major deforestation areas in the world, only one is in a developed country – Australia. The Eastern seaboard, and Queensland in particular, makes the top ten list.

Every 2 minutes, a forest area the size of the MCG is cleared in Australia.

Around 5,000 square kilometres of virgin bushland and advanced regrowth are destroyed annually. In addition to wiping out native wildlife, it is the major cause of salinity and causes around 14% of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions.

Australia has lost 25% rainforest, 45% of open forest, 32% woodland forest and 30% of mallee forest since colonisation. As a result, 20% of Australian mammals (including the koala), 7% of reptiles, 13% of birds are listed as Extinct, Endangered or Vulnerable.

Australia lost 20% of its forests in 2019/20 bushfires. This is a terrifying feedback loop where the clearing of trees leads to climate overheating causing bushfires which destroy even more trees, and the process continues to escalate.

Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation could spiral further out of control. In Queensland, New South Wales, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Victoria, deforestation laws have either been recently weakened or are currently facing rollbacks. Emissions from tree clearing from 2016 to 2030 are projected between 673 and 826 Mt CO²e without substantial policy change. By way of comparison, this is the equivalent of operating at least three to four extra dirty Hazelwood coal-fired power plants for this same period.
In Victoria only 1% of the central highlands mountain ash ecosystem remains untouched.

In 2017–18, the woody vegetation clearing rate in Queensland was 392,000* hectares per year—over four and a half times what it was in 2009. In New South Wales, the government has followed Queensland's lead by ripping up its native vegetation laws. Meanwhile in Western Australia and the Northern Territory, plans are afoot for massive destruction in the Kimberley and Keep River regions for industrial agricultural schemes.

This is insane behaviour. We are not just destroying beautiful forests, we are wilfully destroying the means by which we live. Surely that is the definition of insanity.

We all must work as hard as we can to stop this. Write to politicians, protest in the street, protest in the forests, and only vote for parties who are determined to stop this crazy deforestation of our planet.

We must Fight For the Trees.