The Slash and Burn is a way of getting rid of weeds and unwanted plants, such as trees, so you can prepare a spot for yourself to grow your own food. Even though at the current time when you start burn the last plants from the ground leaving the ground barren. Soon nutrients will come back from the soil from the ashes of the dead plants. The only problem with this is we are taking away homes from other animals that once lived in the area we have “Slashed and burned”. It is an affective way of fertilizing ground and getting rid of unwanted pests and weeds. We, by getting rid of these animals, are perhaps affecting other animals in this same animal’s ecosystem. Although there is conversation that goes on that perhaps really it increases biodiversity making renewed homes for the environment.

            On the other side of this Slash and Burn may in fact not be so helpful. In tropical rain forests because of their high humidity and their heat make the ground very infertile. Using slash and burn you take a big tree and you spread it’s nutrients amongst the ground. Even though it sounds like a great idea really you are taking away of the grounds nutrients more then you are helping it. In tropical rain forests the plants have adapted to the ground and henceforth are good at storing small amounts of nutrients inside of themselves. So when burned the nutrients quickly get stolen and are washed away. In the end you are left with dead almost worthless ground. This also goes hand in hand with Global Warming. By taking away these trees and leaving the ground worthless so that trees can not grow anymore. The large carbon tissues in this giant tropical forest trees is put to waist and we have more carbon pressure in the atmosphere.

            In truth Slash and burn can be positive and not harmful to the environment in different habitats. Although in a Tropical Rain Forest it can take away nutrients and kill off many endangered species. When slash and burn can be practiced in small fertile parts though it can be very productive. It will go through this one way cycle where it will help grow plants and not affect the environment and population around it. In conclusion to this subject: although Slash and Burn is mostly considered harmful biologically it can be productive when used correctly.

 Besides it affecting the ground it also affects the air. With the great amount of smoke let off of a large fire it can pollute the air, with some runaway fires expanding as large as 400 x 600 km. As I just mentioned before, many people that do this do not know how to handle fire so you get “runaway fires”. There has been a surprising amount of runaway fires from this. These fires, obviously, can be much more harmful then most fires because, it has the same affects as it does on the small field but amplified. There are always other factors like; we may be trapping animals in these large fires but, what if we accidentally trap another human in the fire. We really need to be smart when it comes down to it. To not be reckless and really understand what we are doing and get it planned out so we do not hurt the environment or ourselves for that matter.

Then we have many people that rely on Slash and Burn for their food so that they may live. 3 to 5 million people practice Slash and Burn to get their food. Although there is this high number of people using it as a food source does that justify it? Perhaps the fact that there are so many people using it that just shows how it is destroying the environment even more? It comes down to a fight from ecologists and farmers. The ecologists would argue that Slash and Burn is killing special and unique species and destroying their homes. While farmers would argue they were not worried about the animals really just worried about their own survival.

In conclusion I would like to state my opinion on the whole matter. It sounds like to me perhaps the Slash and Burn practice is not all that bad. Sure it kills environments but really that’s just when it is not properly used. As people need it to survive, so they can eat, I can not see a realistic way we can stop it in a good manner. In the end it comes down to really it is a harmful to habitats and species. The decision is all with us to decide whether we need to figure out a way  to get the starving farmers food sufficiently so they do not need to slash and burn or perhaps for the farmers to come up with a more environment friendly practice. Whatever we choose, if we ever do, there most likely will still be people that use the slash and burn. Really we just need to control ourselves and be careful what we do.