Forests impact on human lives in many ways. They serve as safe places of solitude for animals and habitat for biological diversities. Forests support recreational activities and provide important natural resource for generations of people. Many rural populations including millions of impoverished people throughout the world are dependent on forests for their way of life. In other words, forests and their resources are important sources of food, shelter and livelihood. Notwithstanding this fact, the loss of forest has a continued downward trend. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, 80 % of original forest that covered the Earth 8,000 years ago has been cleared, fragmented, or degraded by modern society. It was said that over nine million hectares of forest lands are lost each year throughout the world. In Nigeria, the situation is not different. Approximately 350,000 to 400,000 hectare of forest land is lost annually (FAO, 2007). The degradation of forests has been gone for quite some time. It goes hand in hand with the continuous decline of biodiversity in these habitats (DuToit et al. 2004; Bruner et al. 2001). Without forest conservation there can be no climate protection (Stern, 2008). Local population of countries across the globe predominantly relies on utilizing forest resources. Although many protected areas have been designated in these regions, yet the acreage of natural forests continues to decline. Today only 36 percent of the world's forests are primary forests - forests that have never been disturbed by human activities on a large scale on a large scale (Hirschberger 2007). In Nigeria, deforestation has been identified as one of the causes of some other environmental problems in the country such as desertification and erosion and loss of biological diversity. Additional forest logging and timber production, oil and gas drilling as well as coal mining are all factors contributing to loss of forest in Nigeria. Several efforts to preserve the forests in Nigeria have been made, yet its decline has continued. The essence of this paper, therefore, is to identify the causes for the lost of forest around the globe with particular interest in Nigeria and to suggest ways of effective forest conservation.

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