The Shocking Effects Of Deforestation Come To Life In Brutal Print Ads

What would you do if someone appeared out of nowhere and chopped down your home, along with all of your belongings? It wouldn’t be easy to get back up on your feet. Animals are constantly faced with this issue due to the deforestation happening at rapid rates in many places around the globe.
In fact, around half of all tropical forests in the world have already been cleared, a scary fact considering rainforests contain 70-80% of the world’s biodiversity. When we lose rain forests we don’t just lose trees, but we lose SO much more.
Creative art director Ganesh Prasad Acharya and copywriter Kaushik Katty Roy created these gruesome print ads to bring to life the shocking, but real, effects of deforestation

The ads were designed for Sanctuary Asia, which is the largest (and first) environmental news magazine in India. The slogan for the pictures is, “When the wood go, wildlife goes.” In other words, when you take away irreplaceable animal habitats, you are taking away animal rights to life as well.
The images might be hard to stomach but they share such an important message, if we don’t do something now to stop deforestation we have a lot left to lose.
Technically, deforestation is the permanent destruction of forests in order to make land available for alternative uses, such as farming or housing. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that around 18 million acres of forest are lost to deforestation every year.

The loss of forests is also bad news for greenhouse gas emissions, and deforestation is considered one of the greatest contributing factors to global climate change. When you take away trees, entire swaths of land become dry and barren, dead of life. But we need plants and trees, which take on the important task of absorbing greenhouse gases as well as carbon emissions.

Trees also produce oxygen and help fuel the water cycle by releasing water vapor back up into the atmosphere. Basically, if you take away the trees, you don’t only take away the animals, but eventually you take away the environment necessary for humans to thrive as well.
Since as far back as 1600 deforestation has been taking place, and in the US alone 90% of all natural forests have already been leveled. In the last 50 years there has been a large increase in deforestation, meaning now is the time to take action.

The World Resources Institute estimates the current percentage of forestland left accounts for only 22% of its original mass. The majority of natural forests left are located in Canada, Russia, Alaska, and the Northwestern Amazon basin. Sadly though, the gorgeous Amazon has been highly targeted for deforestation recently.
Forests are leveled using a number of devastating measures, including burning and clear cutting. The Natural Resources Defense Council says that the only ecological trauma that can be compared to clear cutting a forest is a major volcanic eruption.
When forests are cleared for farming, it is overused and over exposed to the sun until the soil literally dies out and new growth becomes out of the question. Once this happens, farmers cut down more forest to restart the process. Since 1960 it is estimated that 1/3 of our planet’s farmland has been destroyed due to deforestation.

When we tear down forests we are literally taking away large chunks of the earth’s precious organs, such as the heart and lungs. By destroying these precious components we are killing innocent animals, devastating local communities, and creating our own final destruction.
Photo Credits: adsoftheworld.com