The Red Squirrel
Deforestation
Awareness Art is an initiative of the Grow and Flourish Foundation. We are a young foundation that does everything under its own steam. Any donation to support our work is more than welcome. Thanks a lot!
The red squirrel, or common squirrel, is the most common squirrel in Europe. Red squirrels are tree squirrels and omnivores. In Great Britain, the number of red squirrels has decreased dramatically since the introduction of the grey squirrel, which originally comes from the eastern part of North America. But this is not the only threat to the small rodent. Due to deforestation, the squirrel is rapidly losing habitat, and the squirrel is not the only animal dealing with this problem.
The importance of forests
Forests are of great importance to the health of the earth. Apart from being the habitat of a substantial part of our flora and fauna, trees store carbon dioxide, and are a fundamental source of oxygen.
When trees are felled, or die otherwise, greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere. Thus, deforestation not only reduces oxygen production, but also increases carbon dioxide emissions.
Forests are therefore of vital importance in the fight against global warming. They also play a crucial role in the preservation of biodiversity. Conservation of forests is therefore an objective that should not be underestimated for the preservation of our ecosystem.
Yet the amount of forest in the world is shrinking at an alarming rate. Forests have to make way for agriculture, mining, infrastructure and recently there have also been more and more examples of – uncontrollable – forest fires, such as in Australia. It is best to take action as soon as possible; because recovering forests is much more difficult than preserving them.