It was the worst of times, the worst of possibilities. The Caribbean tectonic plate grinding against the edge of the North American plate in a "slip-strike" zone meant Haiti's earthquake was close to the surface, instead of deep underground in a subduction zone, where one plate slides beneath another. As a result, Haiti was shaken to pieces.

What's made the devastation worse is the almost total deforestation of this once-lush land that Christopher Columbus, arriving in 1492, called an island paradise. Every hurricane, tropical rain and earthquake causes landslides because there are so few trees to hold the soil in place. Satellite pictures of Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic show bare, raw earth, a veritable desert abutting a sea of green.

The name Haiti derives from what the indigenous Taino people, extinct within 25 years of Spanish conquest, called their home, a word meaning "land of mountains." Most lowland forests were cleared by enslaved Africans brought over by European plantation owners for sugar cane and indigo production centuries ago. Lumbering and slash-and-burn agriculture wiped out most of the rest. Today, even steep mountain slopes have been denuded of trees, since 70 per cent of Haiti's nine million inhabitants, unable to afford propane, use wood or charcoal to cook with.

In photos of the earthquake damage, do you ever see victims resting in the shade of a tree? In fact, less than two per cent of land once forested in Haiti is still treed. The country has only two small national parks, on inaccessible mountain tops. Even they are being degraded by woodcutters.

Canada has close links with Haiti: 80,000 citizens in Montreal alone are of Haitian descent. And we have another connection not many people know about: half the songbirds that nest in eastern Canada migrate to Hispaniola and nearby islands in the Greater Antilles every winter. Many of our colourful wood-warblers head to Haiti and the Dominican Republic, as do cedar waxwings, gray catbirds, rose-breasted grosbeaks, indigo buntings, Baltimore orioles, ruby-crowned kinglets and many swallows.

Ninety percent of the rare Bicknell's thrush, a specialist of Nova Scotia's Cape Breton highlands, attempt to survive winter in Hispaniola's dwindling woodlands.

Factor in massive clear-cut logging of Canada's own forests, plus habitat loss along migration routes, and it's no surprise so many of our songbirds are suffering huge declines. Not to mention the 30 species endemic to Hispaniola.

People ravaged by earthquakes, hurricanes and poverty can't be expected to worry about trees and birds. That's up to us.

Please give generously to help Haitians rebuild their homes, their lives, their country. And when this tragedy has been dealt with, please consider making a donation to the Haiti Audubon Society or BirdLife International/Haiti. Before the earthquake, these two groups were working together to plant trees there.

Nature queries: 905-725-2116 or mcarney@interlinks.net.