Trees Are Our Best Friend Essay: The Importance of Trees

Trees are the essence of life. If you can listen to the murmur of leaves, they say, "we are your best friend." Trees play a crucial role in ecology and our life. Earth will be a desert without greenery. Trees offer numerous benefits to humans, expecting just a bit of love and care, which we often ignore. They give us fruits and foods to feed, oxygen to breathe, absorb carbon dioxide, and timber to make homes. They cause rain, preserve water bodies, and prevent soil erosion and floods. Trees are grand old children of mother earth, surviving longer than human beings.

Importance of Trees

We tend to forget the contribution of trees and endlessly exploit them to meet our growing demands. Despite the vengeance, trees, like true friends, share all the right things with us. They offer the most delicious fruits to eat, seeds to cultivate, and flowers to make this world beautiful. They give us timber and firewood. From timber houses, furniture and different tools are made. From Cellulose, the fibre present in raw wood is processed to make paper. Herbs and teas come with many curative properties, effectively curing many diseases.

Villagers use firewood for cooking their meals. Woods are used to building their huts, carts, and other agricultural tools. A shade provided by a tree is an oasis in the scorching heat. The flowers with a sweet smell beautify our surroundings, and they are offered to God. On the trees, the birds build their nest and wake you up in the morning with their chirp. The butterflies collect nectar from flowers and make honey. Children play around a big mango tree and eat sweet ripe mangoes from the tree. The soothing shade and cool breeze under the tree calm our body and mind. They provide so much and always stand like a true friend.

Birds build the nest on trees, and many animals take shelter in it. The birds lay and hatch eggs on their nests. New lives emerge from the eggs and fly in the sky. Forests are the habit of many animals and birds, where they live, hunt, and prosper; without forest, they would not survive. The ecological system will be disrupted without plants and trees. Herbivorous animals like elephants, giraffes, and zebras survive eating leaves, twigs, and stems of trees. Predators like a lion, tiger, and cheetahs take rest on the shades of trees. Animals like money, squirrels, and chimpanzees take refuge in a tree, as most carnivorous animals cannot climb on a tree. 

The Amazon rainforest is the lung of this earth, controlling oxygen, and carbon dioxide. The rainforest supplies around 6% of the world oxygen and absorbs the same amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. According to the World Life Fund, this forest is the habitat of ten percent of the world's species. The forest is the home of 1,300 species of birds,3,00 species of fishes, and 430 species of mammals.

Trees are guardians of our environment. They control global temperature by releasing moisture in the air. This moisture turns into clouds shielding us from UV rays. Forgetting all the benefits of cutting trees, we cut more trees in a minute than we plant. Nearly .5 660 trees are uprooted in a minute. Every year, 3.5 million trees are cut down. If we continue deforestation, all the rivers on the earth will dry up. If we plant trees within one kilometre on both banks, rivers will flow. Let us make a promise to plant trees to make the environment secure and make our life happy. Trees are the oldest living creatures on this earth. We must save them.

Benefits of Trees to Human and Environment

Trees are highly important to humans and the environment in general because of the various benefits that they provide. The benefits of trees can be categorized as social benefits, environmental benefits, and economic benefits.

Social benefits: Trees serve as a social house for many birds because birds generally build their nest on trees and even lay eggs there. Apart from birds, forests are home to many other animals. Destructing the natural habitat of such animals will leave them devoid of shelter and eventually become endangered. Also, humans see trees as a stress buster because of the serenity it provides. The ambiance of nature reduces tension and fatigue in individuals as well by promoting meditation and self-discovery. Trees also have religious values attached to it. They are worshipped religiously in parts of India like Peepal tree is said to resemble Lord Vishnu, the coconut tree is named after God Lakshmi, the Neem tree signifies Goddess Durga, and the Banyan tree is worshipped during various auspicious occasions. Therefore, cutting these trees is against religion and thus, forbidden.

Environmental benefits: Trees act like a guardian of the environment because they regulate the atmosphere’s temperature and maintain a balance between humidity and dryness and also reduce the effect of greenhouse gases. Apart from this, trees also facilitate the water cycle that causes rainfall and even protect the land from the harsh heat of the sun forming a protective shield and also preventing soil erosion and floods. Trees also help improve soil fertility by releasing nutrients into the soil when the tree and its parts rot. 

Economic benefits: Trees also provide us with certain economic benefits as the food produced by trees is converted to other products that are also exported internationally. Timber obtained from trees is also used for making homes, schools, offices, and colleges. Also, the paper used in daily lives is another important economic product obtained from trees. Also, there are many medicines produced from trees to treat diseases like HIV, fever, mastitis, and cancer.

Over-Exploitation of Trees by the Environment and Human Race

Though trees are really significant for all the living creatures on Earth, they are still overexploited in a lot of ways. However, if we as humans keep on overexploiting forest resources at such a pace, we will surely face its after-effects and consequences in the future. The industrial sector possesses a major impact on trees as they are cutting down trees exponentially so that they can get raw materials from the forest in bulk. Apart from this, even governments cut down a lot of trees to clear land for domestic purposes.

Conclusion of ‘Trees Are Our Best Friends’

We cannot survive in this world without our friends and similarly, it is impossible to survive on this land without trees. Trees give us everything and in return, we do nothing for trees. The least that we can do for trees is to protect them from being cut and over-exploited because without them our motherland will turn into a desert. Though the government is taking measures to conserve trees, we as responsible citizens of the country should also take some effective steps to protect these non-renewable sources, that is, our trees and forests. 

In today's time, the world pays little or no attention to the direct consequences of deforestation, and each one of us should take measures to protect our trees before it gets too late. 

A Brief Summary on Trees Are Our Best Friends

These points will help students in framing a well-structured essay on the topic ‘Trees Are Our Best Friends’

• Trees provide human beings with oxygen and breathe in carbon-di-oxide from the atmosphere, thereby maintaining the natural balance.

• Trees provide the environment with beautiful and colorful flowers, delicious and sweet fruits, and healthy herbs.

• Trees even provide human beings with food, air, water, and shelter.

• Trees are the primary source of oxygen on Earth.

• Areas with more trees are benefitted from rainfall and various other climatic phenomena as well.

• Trees must be conserved in their natural habitat.

• We as human beings, never give anything in return for the benefits it provides us with.

• Trees make our environment look even more beautiful and aesthetic.

• Therefore, for all the benefits trees provide us, they must be respected and conserved.