Genetic Modification of Trees: Good for Decorating, Bad for Forests and Health

Trees, the long-lived thousand of years old plant have been creating a beautiful natural landscape to the Earth, supplying us with oxygen, reducing carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, and helping to control ground temperatures. Trees not only create a healthy environment for us, some of them contribute to a natural and nutritious food source as well.

Recently, scientists have been developing ways to genetically modify trees. The genetic modification of tress include speeding up their breeding cycles, altering their wood, improving their resistance to pests and diseases, and even alter their height. With learning of this new development, this causes a lot of problems with our ecosystem as well as the way us humans think.

Many of us are very fixated with the ideas of design and appearance. Because of this fixation, millions of trees are cut down or cut in half just to make someone's yard look more appealing or to make way for an office building that has to look professional and can't have anything blocking their view. Many of the trees are hacked down to make way for roads and replaced by these trees, well; I wouldn't even call them trees, they're more like barks with a few leaves coming out of them. You know as well as I do that those side of the road trees are planted and cut for design and appearance specifications.

We are already losing our forests due to construction zones. Genetic modification of trees will not be able to fully replicate what a forest can do for our oxygen levels and carbon dioxide levels. Trees have been around for millions of years and many of the trees still standing in our world are over nine thousand years old. I fail to believe that we have the knowledge to genetically modify and create trees that can do the same thing that trees have been doing for over a million years.

One aspect of the genetic modification of trees is the technology to rid trees from pests; however pests are there for a reason. Moths, beetles, weevils, spittlebugs, caterpillars, whatever the bug may be, whether creepy looking or not, all are part of some sort of life cycle food chain and are put on this planet for some reason or another. Genetic modification of trees to prevent the pests from feeding on the trees may cause mass extinctions of some insects or drive them into the populated areas to cause more of a problem then originally thought.

For the flowering trees that are genetically altered, you not only have to worry about if the tree is producing oxygen and reducing carbon dioxide, but you have to consider if the tree is going to create edible fruits that not only taste the same, but have the same amount of nutrients and are not harmful in any way shape or form.

The idea of modifying trees is already being used in some areas of the world. New Zealand is not only studying the various ideas listed above, but also are trying to develop the genetic modifications to help in the protection of endangered animal species, develop new foods, and create a modification to be successful in more productive crops.

In conclusion, this idea of genetic modification of trees has a lot of pros and more cons than pros. There is a lot that could go wrong that would interfere with our health, our food supply, and our atmosphere. We are already fighting the worldwide increase of global warming and climate change, so we need to be very careful in the way we approach altering things that have been around since time began and way before us humans entered the picture. So, do yourself and the environment a favor, plant a tree and save a tree. Remember, one acre of trees can provide 18 people with oxygen; one mature tree can absorb almost 50 pounds of carbon dioxide a year; and trees can save us a bunch of money on energy bills. So start planting!