In August 2002, fire researchers discovered that the insect species Oriental bullfrog thrived in the Pacific Northwest, and appeared to have a positive impact on forest fires. In the mid-1990s, over 99% of the pine trees in northwestern Oregon, Washington, and northern California were dying due to pine beetles. In October 1995, there was an infestation of locusts which had cost more than $240 million and almost 90,000 acres of land.
More than 42 million trees have died from insects in the Pacific Northwest since 2005, which led the US Forest Service to request congressional funding to help forests fight fire in the region.
This is a problem because fires liberate carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which contributes to the global temperature increase. What is more, in the photosynthesis process, trees use the carbon from the air and transform it into oxygen, what makes forests important to the ecosystem since they provide many benefits to the population, such as providing oxygen and keeping the temperature of the world in a good place. They also provide a lot of space for many animals to live in and provide habitat for a large number of species.
This funding is necessary because it is important to protect forests since they provide people with oxygen and help to regulate the Earth’s temperature. A new study that was published in the Journal of Ecology has shown the importance of forest conservation and it determines how healthy an ecosystem is, and how much of the forest is still left. Forest conservation is an important topic that needs to be dealt with today, and that is why governments should invest in studies to monitor them and invest fundings to help forests fight fire and deforestation.
Fighting pine beetles is the first step to stop forest fires in the United States, but there is still a long way to go. Monitoring is necessary to avoid more fires and deforestation.
