Where have the trees gone ?

Question

Where have the trees gone ?

Answer 1

the clearing or thinning of forests, the cause of which is normally implied to be human activity. As such, deforestation represents one of the largest issues in global land use in the early 21st century. Estimates of deforestation traditionally are based on the area of forest cleared for human use, including removal of the trees for wood products and for croplands and grazing lands. In the practice of clear-cutting, all the trees are removed from the land, which completely destroys the forest. In some cases, however, even partial logging and accidental fires thin out the trees enough to change the forest structure dramatically.

Conversion of forests to land used for other purposes has a long history. The Earth's croplands, which cover about 15 million square km (5.8 million square miles), are mostly deforested land. More than 11 million square km (4.2 million square miles) of present-day croplands receive enough rain and are warm enough to have once supported forests of one kind or another. Of these 11 million square km, only 1 million (390,000 square miles) are in areas that would have been cool boreal forests, as in Scandinavia and northern Canada. Two million square km (770,000 square miles) were once moist tropical forests. The rest were once temperate forests or subtropical forests including forests in eastern North America, western Europe, and eastern China.

This is just an excerpt from a more lengthy article in Encyclopedia Britannica Online (a subscription database which you may have access to via your local library Web site)

Is your interest in deforestation?  Any particular part of the country or globe?

Answer 2

they've been cut down by money grubbing old men whose greed is only surpassed by their immense ignorance and stupidity

Answer 3

Elucidate.