rnment set up a program to relocate poor people outside of large cities. The government started building roads through rainforests and then bused people to the rainforest to start a new life. To try and make a living people began to slash and burn the rainforest in order to make room for agriculture.(see Figure 1) For the first couple of years the ashes from the rainforest act as a fertilizer, but rainforest land isn't very good for growing crops. The soil in which rainforests grows isn't very arable, which is why whenever you see pictures of rainforests the roots grow shallow in the ground and spread throughout long distances. As soon as the soil is devoid of nutrients, farmers move on to the next patch of rainforests and the process starts all over again.
             Logging is one of the five most valuable exports from third world countries, one single tree from the rainforest can be worth up to $1000. South East Asia is a source of about ¾ of all exported tropical lumber, which is the leading cause of degradation throughout that continent. More than 70% of all tropical hardwoods are produced by only six countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Brazil, and Cote d'Ivoire. When logging companies come in they only want the best quality wood, which is only a dozen of Asia's 630 wood species. The problem is these species are scattered throughout the forests, and within one acre there are usually only a couple of trees that are suitable to loggers. Loggers go into a forest, extract the trees they want, all the while trampling other species around; the trouble with this when a few trees are extracted per hectare, it ends up affects one to two thirds of the surrounding trees.
             Cash crops are a big contributor to the problem of deforestation. During colonial times, Europeans came into Africa and with them new crops for farmers to plant. These crops were not suited for the arid land of Afri...