Rainforest Facts - The Diigo Meta page

• 27 May 19
  

  JT Fournier

  ethics amazon

• 06 Apr 16
  

  quancee22
• 01 Apr 16
  

  frankyboo

  rainforest brazil

• 30 Mar 16
  

  daniela2407

  rainforest facts extra

  • Experts estimates that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every single day due to rainforest deforestation. That equates to 50,000 species a year.
• 29 Jan 16
  

  Juliana Bellina
  • We are losing Earth's greatest biological treasures just as we are beginning to appreciate their true value. Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6% and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years.
  • We are losing Earth's greatest biological treasures just as we are beginning to appreciate their true value. Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6% and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years.
  • • One and one-half acres of rainforest are lost every second with tragic consequences for both developing and industrial countries.
     
  • Rainforests are being destroyed because the value of rainforest land is perceived as only the value of its timber by short-sighted governments, multi-national logging companies, and land owners.
  • Nearly half of the world's species of plants, animals and microorganisms will be destroyed or severely threatened over the next quarter century due to rainforest deforestation.
  • Experts estimates that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every single day due to rainforest deforestation. That equates to 50,000 species a year. As the rainforest species disappear, so do many possible cures for life-threatening diseases. Currently, 121 prescription drugs sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. While 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less that 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.
  • Most rainforests are cleared by chainsaws, bulldozers and fires for its timber value and then are followed by farming and ranching operations, even by world giants like Mitsubishi Corporation, Georgia Pacific, Texaco and Unocal
  • • There were an estimated ten million Indians living in the Amazonian Rainforest five centuries ago. Today there are less than 200,000.
     
    • In Brazil alone, European colonists have destroyed more than 90 indigenous tribes since the 1900's. With them have gone centuries of accumulated knowledge of the medicinal value of rainforest species. As their homelands continue to be destroyed by deforestation, rainforest peoples are also disappearing.
     

  6 more annotations...

• 23 Mar 15
  

  s057022

  Great for reasearch about rainforests and endangered animals

  • • Experts estimates that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every single day due to rainforest deforestation. That equates to 50,000 species a year. As the rainforest species disappear, so do many possible cures for life-threatening diseases. Currently, 121 prescription drugs sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. While 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less that 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.
     
• 05 Sep 14
  

  Thais Lobo Junqueira

  Rainforests Brazil Environment

• 06 Mar 14
  

  Alexandra Vasquez

  rainforest facts biomes habitats

• 01 Mar 14
  

  Sara Dorton

  rainforest facts deforestation amazon biomes

• 04 Sep 13
  

  Alex H
  • Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6% and experts estimate that the
  • last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years.
  • One and one-half acres of rainforest are lost every second
  • Rainforests are being destroyed because the value of rainforest land
  • Nearly half of the world's species of plants, animals and microorganisms will be destroyed or severely threatened over the next quarter century due to rainforest deforestation.
  • Experts estimates that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every single day due to rainforest deforestation. That equates to 50,000 species a year. As the rainforest species disappear, so do many possible cures for life-threatening diseases. Currently, 121 prescription drugs sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. While 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less that 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.
  • Most rainforests are cleared by chainsaws, bulldozers and fires for its timber value and then are followed by farming and ranching operations, even by world giants like Mitsubishi Corporation, Georgia Pacific, Texaco and Unocal.
  • The Amazon Rainforest has been described as the "Lungs of our Planet" because it provides the essential environmental world service of continuously recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen. More than 20 percent of the world oxygen is produced in the Amazon
  • Rainforest.

  7 more annotations...

• 22 Jul 13
  

  Vickie Thiel

  Rainforest Sites
  

  rainforest facts deforestation amazon biomes

• 11 Apr 13
  

  Nancy Smith

  Rainforest

• 14 Mar 13
  

  Becca Radtie

  This website is a great resource to use for information on deforestation. It explains why rainforests are important, why deforestations is occurring and offers some possible solutions.

  science EDUC325

• 13 Mar 13
  

  John Howell

  rainforest science

• 11 Mar 13
  

  Pru Thomas

  rainforest_products HSIE rainforest

  • The Wealth of the Rainforests
  • • At least 80% of the developed world's diet originated in the tropical rainforest. Its bountiful gifts to the world include fruits like avocados, coconuts, figs, oranges, lemons, grapefruit, bananas, guavas, pineapples, mangos and tomatoes; vegetables including corn, potatoes, rice, winter squash and yams; spices like black pepper, cayenne, chocolate, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, sugar cane, tumeric, coffee and vanilla and nuts including Brazil nuts and cashews.
     
      

     

     
    • At least 3000 fruits are found in the rainforests; of these only 200 are now in use in the Western World. The Indians of the rainforest use over 2,000.
  • Currently, 121 prescription drugs currently sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. And while 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less than 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.
  • The U.S. National Cancer Institute has identified 3000 plants that are active against cancer cells. 70% of these plants are found in the rainforest. Twenty-five percent of the active ingredients in today's cancer-fighting drugs come from organisms found only in the rainforest.
  • Vincristine, extracted from the rainforest plant, periwinkle, is one of the world's most powerful anticancer drugs. It has dramatically increased the survival rate for acute childhood leukemia since its discovery.

  3 more annotations...

• 16 Feb 13
  

  Robin Sylvestri
• 07 Feb 13
  

  Edgington E
  • Experts estimates that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every  single day due to rainforest deforestation. That equates to 50,000 species a  year. As the rainforest species disappear, so do many possible cures for  life-threatening diseases. Currently, 121 prescription drugs sold worldwide come  from plant-derived sources. While 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived  from rainforest ingredients, less that 1% of these tropical trees and plants  have been tested by scientists.

  • THE BIODIVERSITY OF THE RAINFOREST
  • The biodiversity of the tropical rainforest is  so immense that less than 1 percent of its millions of species have been studied  by scientists for their active constituents and their possible uses. When an  acre of topical rainforest is lost, the impact on the number of plant and animal  species lost and their possible uses is staggering. Scientists estimate that we  are losing more than 137 species of plants and animals every single day because  of rainforest deforestation.

  • Largest Collection of Plant and Animal Species

  • Scarring and Loss of Diversity

  3 more annotations...

• 05 Feb 13
  

  Malaak J

  rainforest site with information

  rainforest facts amazon

• 11 Jan 13
  

  Courtney N

  amazon rainforest facts!

  amazon rainforest facts

• 26 Nov 12
  

  Kevin Thayer
• 16 Nov 12
  

  Honig Frand Adam Jacob

  This shows how the rainforest are treated badly.

  deforestation

  • We are losing Earth's greatest biological treasures just as we are beginning to appreciate their true value. Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6% and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years.
  • One and one-half acres of rainforest are lost every second with tragic consequences for both developing and industrial countries.
  • The Amazon Rainforest has been described as the "Lungs of our Planet" because it provides the essential environmental world service of continuously recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen. More than 20 percent of the world oxygen is produced in the Amazon Rainforest.
  • If managed properly, the rainforest can provide the world's need for these natural resources on a perpetual basis.

  2 more annotations...

• 15 Nov 12
  

  Parsons Aidan Lee
• 09 Nov 12
  

  Tori P
  • Most rainforests are cleared by chainsaws, bulldozers and fires for its timber  value and then are followed by farming and ranching operations, even by world  giants like Mitsubishi Corporation, Georgia Pacific, Texaco and Unocal.
  • Most medicine men and shamans remaining in the Rainforests today are 70 years  old or more. Each time a rainforest medicine man dies, it is as if a library has  burned down
• 08 Nov 12
  

  Kat Williams

  rainforest

• 27 Oct 12
  

  tiersa boney
• 22 Oct 12
  

  Chelsea Rudiger

  There are all different kinds of rainforest facts here. These can be used for all kinds of research for and about the rainforests.

  rainforest EDUC325

• 05 Oct 12
  

  Jordan Slaughterbeck
  • Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6%
  • and experts e
  • stimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less tha
  • estroyed because the value of rainforest land is perceived as only the value of its timber by
  • Experts estimates that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every single day due to rainforest deforestation. That equates to 50,000 species a year
  • rainforest species disappear, so do many possible cures for life-threatening diseases.
  • Currently, 121 prescription drugs sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. While 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less that 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.
  • Most rainforests are cleared by chainsaws, bulldozers and fires for its timber value
  • There were an estimated ten million Indians living in the Amazonian Rainforest five centuries ago. Today there are less than 200,000.
  • 90 indigenous tribes since the 1900's

  8 more annotations...

• 28 Sep 12
  

  Anni Gold

  rainforest facts deforestation amazon biomes geography

• 12 Sep 12
  

  Briana T

  rainforest facts on deforestation amazon and habitats and lots more

  rainforest facts

• 10 Sep 12
  

  Riley Pincus

  rainforest

  palm oil

• 07 Sep 12
  

  Brooke Wild

  facts

• 19 Aug 12
  

  Helen Kay

  rainforest habitats amazon

• 26 Jun 12
  

  Daniel Tam

  rainforest info

  rainforest amazon

• 21 Jun 12
  

  jonno taylor

  "biological"

  jonno

• 13 Jun 12
  

  Daniel Steele

  deforestation facts rainforest habitats

  • One and one-half acres of rainforest are lost every second with tragic consequences for both developing and industrial countries.
  • Experts estimates that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every single day due to rainforest deforestation. That equates to 50,000 species a year. As the rainforest species disappear, so do many possible cures for life-threatening diseases.
• 08 Jun 12
  

  soapyie
  • Experts estimates that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every single day due to rainforest deforestation. That equates to 50,000 species a year. As the rainforest species disappear, so do many possible cures for life-threatening diseases.
  • The U.S. National Cancer Institute has identified 3000 plants that are active against cancer cells. 70% of these plants are found in the rainforest. Twenty-five percent of the active ingredients in today's cancer-fighting drugs come from organisms found only in the rainforest
• 05 Jun 12
  

  Evelyn Bleed

  We are losing Earth's greatest biological treasures just as we are beginning to appreciate their true value. Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface;
  15
  now they cover a mere 6% and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years.

  Logging population facts habitats

  • We are losing Earth's greatest biological treasures just as we are beginning to appreciate their true value. Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface
  • Logging tropical hardwoods like teak, mahogany, rosewood, and other timber for furniture, building materials, charcoal, and other wood products is big business and big profits. Several species of tropical hardwoods are imported by developed counties, including the United States, just to build coffins that are then buried or burned. The demand, extraction, and consumption of tropical hardwoods has been so massive that some countries that have been traditional exporters of tropical hardwoods are now importing them because they have already exhausted their supply by destroying their native rainforests in slash-and-burn operations. It is anticipated that the Philippines, Malaysia, the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and Thailand will soon follow, as all these countries will run out of rainforest hardwood timber for export within five years. Japan is the largest importer of tropical woods. Despite recent reductions, Japan's average tropical timber import of 11 million cubic meters annually is still gluttonous. The demand for tropical hardwood timber is damaging to the ecological, biological, and social fabric of tropical lands and is clearly unsustainable for any length of time.
  • Logging concessions in the Amazon are sold for as little as $2 per acre, with logging companies felling timber worth thousands of dollars per acre.

  1 more annotation...

• 24 May 12
  

  spunk9

  WWF

• 23 May 12
  

  Mick Monsereenusorn

  This website has a lot of facts about the rain forest and about different groups.

  Brazilian_Malaysian Government

• 09 Apr 12
  

  sped314

  Rainforest facts 

  rainforest facts deforestation biomes amazon

• 29 Mar 12
  

  Michael Landry

  rainforest

  • • We are losing Earth's greatest biological treasures just as we are beginning to appreciate their true value. Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6% and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years.
     
    • One and one-half acres of rainforest are lost every second with tragic consequences for both developing and industrial countries.
  • Nearly half of the world's species of plants, animals and microorganisms will be destroyed or severely threatened over the next quarter century due to rainforest deforestation.
  • Experts estimates that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every single day due to rainforest deforestation. That equates to 50,000 species a year. As the rainforest species disappear, so do many possible cures for life-threatening diseases. Currently, 121 prescription drugs sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. While 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less that 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.
  • The Amazon Rainforest has been described as the "Lungs of our Planet" because it provides the essential environmental world service of continuously recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen. More than 20 percent of the world oxygen is produced in the Amazon Rainforest.
  • Currently, 121 prescription drugs currently sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. And while 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less than 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.

  3 more annotations...

• 27 Mar 12
  

  Jayanna Killingsworth

  environmental

• 23 Mar 12
  

  Jeffrey Kooken
  • Experts estimates that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every  single day due to rainforest deforestation.
  • Experts agree that by leaving the rainforests intact and harvesting it's many  nuts, fruits, oil-producing plants, and medicinal plants, the rainforest has  more economic value than if they were cut down to make grazing land for cattle  or for timber
• 07 Mar 12
  

  charlotte kilshaw
  • One and one-half acres of rainforest are lost every second
• 22 Feb 12
  

  Lilianna W
• 08 Feb 12
  

  Raquel Farlano

  amazon rainforest facts

  • next quarter century
  • pharmaceuticals
  • In 2001, The World Resources Institute estimated that the demand for rice, wheat, and corn is expected to grow by 40% by 2020, increasing irrigation water demands by 50% or more. They further reported that the demand for wood could double by the year 2050; unfortunately, it is still the tropical forests of the world that supply the bulk of the world's demand for wood.
  • Massive deforestation brings with it many ugly consequences-air and water pollution, soil erosion, malaria epidemics, the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the eviction and decimation of indigenous Indian tribes, and the loss of biodiversity through extinction of plants and animals. Fewer rainforests mean less rain, less oxygen for us to breathe, and an increased threat from global warming.
  • We converted 90 percent of North America's virgin forests into firewood, shingles, furniture, railroad ties, and paper. Other industrialized countries have done no better. Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil, and other tropical countries with rainforests are often branded as "environmental villains"
  • Industrial countries would not be buying rainforest hardwoods and timber had we not cut down our own trees long ago, nor would poachers in the Amazon jungle be slaughtering jaguar, ocelot, caiman, and otter if we did not provide lucrative markets for their skins in Berlin, Paris, and Tokyo.
  • A 25-acre plot of rainforest in Borneo may contain more than 700 species of trees - a number equal to the total tree diversity of North America.
  • tropical rainforest is so immense that less than 1 percent of its millions of  species have been studied by scientists
  • Scientists estimate that we are losing more than 137 species of plants and  animals every single day because of rainforest deforestation.
  • Estimates vary from 2 million to 100 million species, with a best estimate of  somewhere near 10 million; only 1.4 million of these species have actually been  named.
  • rainforests occupy only 2 percent of the entire Earth's surface and 6 percent of  the world's land surface, yet these remaining lush rainforests support over half  of our planet's wild plants and trees and one-half of the world's wildlife.  Hundreds and thousands of these rainforest species are being extinguished before  they have even been identified
  • 150 acres lost every minute of every day
  • vanishing at a rate of 20,000 square miles a year
  • 80 to 90 percent of tropical rainforest ecosystems will be destroyed by the year  2020. This destruction is the main force driving a species extinction rate  unmatched in 65 million years.
  • More than 2,000 species of fish have been identified in the Amazon Basin - more  species than in the entire Atlantic Ocean.
  • It is estimated that a single hectare (2.47 acres) of Amazon rainforest contains about 900 tons of living plants, including more than 750 types of trees and 1500 other plants.
  • for logging timber, large-scale cattle ranching, mining operations, government road building and hydroelectric schemes, military operations, and the subsistence agriculture of peasants and landless settlers. Sadder still, in many places the rainforests are burnt simply to provide charcoal to power industrial plants in the area.
  • 20 percent of Earth's oxygen is produced in this area.
  • 1.2 billion acres, representing two-fifths of the enormous South American  continent, and is found in nine South American countries: Brazil, Colombia,  Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, French Guiana, and Suriname
  • 2.5 million square miles of rainforest
  • Amazon rainforest represents 54 percent of the total rainforests left on Earth.
  • 5,600 square miles of Amazon rainforest were burned to the ground and replanted  with pulpwood trees
  • manufacturing plant consumes 2,000 tons of surrounding rainforest wood every day  to produce 55 megawatts of electricity to run the plant. The plant, which has  been in operation since 1978, produces more than 750 tons of pulp for paper  every 24 hours, worth approximately $500,000, and has built 2,800 miles of roads  through the Amazon rainforest to be used by its 700 vehicles.
  • To date, some 438,000 species of plants of economic and social interest have been registered in the region, and many more have yet to be catalogued or even discovered.
  • paper industry alone will consume 4 billion tons of wood annually by the year 2020.
  • The Amazon Basin was formed in the Paleozoic period, somewhere between 500  million and 200 million years ago.
  • One single cattle operation in Brazil that was co-owned by British Barclays Bank and one of Brazil's wealthiest families was responsible for the destruction of almost 500,000 acres of virgin rainforest.
  • "they can't see the forest for the trees."
  • Japan's average tropical timber import of 11 million cubic meters annually
  • These machines that cut entire trees into chips half the size of a matchbox can  gobble up more than 200 species of trees in mere minutes.
  • Logging concessions in the Amazon are sold for as little as $2 per acre, with  logging companies felling timber worth thousands of dollars per acre
  • Because rainforest plants are complex chemical storehouses that contain many undiscovered biodynamic compounds with unrealized potential for use in modern medicine.
  • Rainforests currently provide sources for one-fourth of today's medicines, and 70 percent of the plants found to have anticancer properties are found only in the rainforest.
  • Two drugs obtained from a rainforest plant known as the Madagascar periwinkle, now extinct in the wild due to deforestation of the Madagascar rainforest, have increased the chances of survival for children with leukemia from 20 percent to 80 percent. Think about it: eight out of ten children are now saved, rather than eight of ten children dying from leukemia.
  • 25 percent of prescriptions are filled with drugs whose active ingredients are extracted or derived from plants. By 1980 sales of these plant-based drugs in the United States amounted to some $4.5 billion annually. Worldwide sales of these plant-based drugs were estimated at $40 billion in 1990.
  • 121 prescription drugs sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources from only 90 species of plants. Still more drugs are derived from animals and microorganisms.
  • 3,000 plants that are active against cancer cells, and 70 percent of these plants are found only in the rainforest.
  • These plant chemicals may well help us in our own ongoing struggle with constantly evolving pathogens, including bacteria, viruses, and fungi that are mutating against our mainstream drugs and becoming resistant to them. These pathogens cause serious diseases, including hepatitis, pneumonia, tuberculosis, and HIV, all of which are becoming more difficult to treat. Experts now believe that if there is a cure for cancer and even AIDS, it will probably be found in the rainforest.

  36 more annotations...

• 27 Jan 12
  

  zacc wynn
• 20 Jan 12
  

  Brittany Ladd
  • Since 1980 the global economy has tripled in size and the world population has increased by 30 percent.
  • In 2001, The World Resources Institute estimated that the demand for rice, wheat, and corn is expected to grow by 40% by 2020, increasing irrigation water demands by 50% or more. They further reported that the demand for wood could double by the year 2050; unfortunately, it is still the tropical forests of the world that supply the bulk of the world's demand for wood.
  • In 1950, about 15 percent of the Earth's land surface was covered by rainforest. Today, more than half has already gone up in smoke. In fewer than fifty years, more than half of the world's tropical rainforests have fallen victim to fire and the chain saw, and the rate of destruction is still accelerating. Unbelievably, more than 200,000 acres of rainforest are burned every day. That is more than 150 acres lost every minute of every day, and 78 million acres lost every year! More than 20 percent of the Amazon rainforest is already gone, and much more is severely threatened as the destruction continues. It is estimated that the Amazon alone is vanishing at a rate of 20,000 square miles a year. If nothing is done to curb this trend, the entire Amazon could well be gone within fifty years.

     
  • Why should the loss of tropical forests be of any concern to us in light of our own poor management of natural resources? The loss of tropical rainforests has a profound and devastating impact on the world because rainforests are so biologically diverse, more so than other ecosystems (e.g., temperate forests) on Earth.
     

    Consider these facts:  

    • A single pond in Brazil can sustain a greater variety of fish than is found in all of Europe's rivers. 
    • A 25-acre plot of rainforest in Borneo may contain more than 700 species of trees - a number equal to the total tree diversity of North America. 
    • A single rainforest reserve in Peru is home to more species of birds than are found in the entire United States.  
    • One single tree in Peru was found to harbor forty-three different species of ants - a total that approximates the entire number of ant species in the British Isles.  
    • The number of species of fish in the Amazon exceeds the number found in the entire Atlantic Oce
      an.
     
    The biodiversity of the tropical rainforest is so immense that less than 1 percent of its millions of species have been studied by scientists for their active constituents and their possible uses. When an acre of topical rainforest is lost, the impact on the number of plant and animal species lost and their possible uses is staggering. Scientists estimate that we are losing more than 137 species of plants and animals every single day because of rainforest deforestation.
  • The magnitude of this loss to the world was most poignantly described by Harvard's Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist Edward O. Wilson over a decade ago:

     

    "The worst thing that can happen during the 1980s is not energy  depletion, economic collapses, limited nuclear war, or conquest by a totalitarian government. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired within a few generations. The one process ongoing in the 1980s that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly that our descendants are least likely to forgive us for."
  • I

    f deforestation continues at current rates, scientists estimate nearly 80 to 90 percent of tropical rainforest ecosystems will be destroyed by the year 2020. This destruction is the main force driving a species extinction rate unmatched in 65 million years.
  • The Amazon Basin was formed in the Paleozoic period, somewhere between 500 million and 200 million years ago. The extreme age of the region in geologic terms has much to do with the relative infertility of the rainforest soil and the richness and unique diversity of the plant and animal life. There are more fertile areas in the Amazon River's flood plain, where the river deposits richer soil brought from the Andes, which only formed 20 million years ago.
  • The Amazon rainforest contains the largest collection of living plant and animal species in the world. The diversity of plant species in the Amazon rainforest is the highest on Earth. It is estimated that a single hectare (2.47 acres) of Amazon rainforest contains about 900 tons of living plants, including more than 750 types of trees and 1500 other plants. The Andean mountain range and the Amazon jungle are home to more than half of the world's species of flora and fauna; in fact, one in five of all the birds in the world live in the rainforests of the Amazon. To date, some 438,000 species of plants of economic and social interest have been registered in the region, and many more have yet to be catalogued or even discovered.

  • Scarring and Loss of Diversity

     

    Once a vast sea of tropical forest, the Amazon rainforest today is scarred by roads, farms, ranches, and dams. Brazil is gifted with a full third of the world's remaining rainforests; unfortunately, it is also one of the world's great rainforest destroyers, burning or felling more than 2.7 million acres each year. More than 20 percent of rainforest in the Amazon has been razed and is gone forever. This ocean of green, nearly as large as Australia, is the last great rainforest in the known universe and it is being decimated like the others before it. Why? Like other rainforests already lost forever, the land is being cleared for logging timber, large-scale cattle ranching, mining operations, government road building and hydroelectric schemes, military operations, and the subsistence agriculture of peasants and landless settlers. Sadder still, in many places the rainforests are burnt simply to provide charcoal to power industrial plants in the area.

  7 more annotations...

• 

  logan sloan
  • • Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6% and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years.
     
  • sequences for both developing and industrial countries.
  • One and one-half acres of rainforest are lost every second with tragic con
  • orest land is perceived as only the value of its timber by
  • the value of rainf
  • because
  • Rainforests are being destroyed
  • short-sighted governments, multi-national logging companies, and land owners.
  • Nearly half of the world's species of plants, animals and microorganisms will be destroyed or severely threatened over the next quarter century due to rainforest deforestation
  • Experts estimates that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every single day due to rainforest deforestation. That equates to 50,000 species a year. As the rainforest species disappear, so do many possible cures for life-threatening diseases. Currently, 121 prescription drugs sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. While 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less that 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.
  • • Most rainforests are cleared by chainsaws, bulldozers and fires for its timber value and then are followed by farming and ranching operations, even by world giants like Mitsubishi Corporation, Georgia Pacific, Texaco and Unocal.
     
  • There were an estimated ten million Indians living in the Amazonian Rainforest five centuries ago. Today there are less than 200,000.
  • In Brazil alone, European colonists have destroyed more than 90 indigenous tribes since the 1900's.
  • Each time a rainforest medicine man dies, it is as if a library has burned down.
  • One hectare (2.47 acres) may contain over 750 types of trees and 1500 species of higher plants.
  • At least 80% of the developed world's diet originated in the tropical rainforest. Its bountiful gifts to the world include fruits like avocados, coconuts, figs, oranges, lemons, grapefruit, bananas, guavas, pineapples, mangos and tomatoes; vegetables including corn, potatoes, rice, winter squash and yams; spices like black pepper, cayenne, chocolate, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, sugar cane, tumeric, coffee and vanilla and nuts including Brazil nuts and cashews.
  • At least 3000 fruits are found in the rainforests; of these only 200 are now in use in the Western World. The Indians of the rainf
  • • orest use over 2,000.
      
  • Currently, 121 prescription drugs currently sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. And while 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less than 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientist
  • • s.
      
    • The U.S. National Cancer Institute has identified 3000 plants that are active against cancer cells. 70% of these plants are found in the rainforest. Twenty-five percent of the active ingredients in today's cancer-fighting drugs come from organisms found only in the rainforest.
      
  • • Vincristine, extracted from the rainforest plant, periwinkle, is one of the world's most powerful anticancer drugs. It has dramatically increased the survival rate for acute childhood leukemia since its discovery.
      
  • In 1983, there were no U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturers involved in research programs to discover new drugs or cures from plants. Today, over 100 pharmaceutical companies and several branches of the US government, including giants like Merck and The National Cancer Institute, are engaged in plant research projects for possible drugs and cures for viruses, infections, cancer, and even AIDS.
  • Experts agree that by leaving the rainforests intact and harvesting it's many nuts, fruits, oil-producing plants, and medicinal plants, the rainforest has more economic value than if they were cut down to make grazing land for cattle or for timber.
  • The latest statistics show that rainforest land converted to cattle operations yields the land owner $60 per acre and if timber is harvested, the land is worth $400 per acre. However, if these renewable and sustainable resources are harvested, the land will yield the land owner $2,400 per acre.
  • THE IMPORTANCE OF THE RAINFOREST
  • Sadly, it has taken only a century of human intervention to destroy what nature designed to last forever.
  • Since 1980 the global economy has tripled in size and the world population has increased by 30 percent.
  • In 2001, The World Resources Institute estimated that the demand for rice, wheat, and corn is expected to grow by 40% by 2020, increasing irrigation water demands by 50% or more
  • . They further reported that the demand for wood could double by the year 2050; unfortunately, it is still the tropical forests of the world that supply the bulk of the world's demand for wood.
  • In 1950, about 15 percent of the Earth's land surface was covered by rainforest. Today, more than half has already gone up in smoke. In fewer than fifty years, more than half of the world's tropical rainforests have fallen victim to fire and the chain saw, and the rate of destruction is still accelerating. Unbelievably, more than 200,000 acres of rainforest are burned every day. That is more than 150 acres lost every minute of every day, and 78 million acres lost every year!
  • More than 20 percent of the Amazon rainforest is already gone, and much more is severely threatened as the destruction continues. It is estimated that the Amazon alone is vanishing at a rate of 20,000 square miles a year. If nothing is done to curb this trend, the entire Amazon could well be gone within fifty years.
  • Massive deforestation brings with it many ugly consequences-air and water pollution, soil erosion, malaria epidemics, the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the eviction and decimation of indigenous Indian tribes, and the loss of biodiversity through extinction of plants and animals. Fewer rainforests mean less rain, less oxygen for us to breathe, and an increased threat from global warming.
  • We converted 90 percent of North America's virgin forests into firewood, shingles, furniture, railroad ties, and paper.
  • Other industrialized countries have done no better. Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil, and other tropical countries with rainforests are often branded as "environmental villains" of the world, mainly because of their reported levels of destruction of their rainforests. But despite the levels of deforestation, up to 60 percent of their territory is still covered by natural tropical forests. In fact, today, much of the pressures on their remaining rainforests comes from servicing the needs and markets for wood products in industrialized countries that have already depleted their own natural resources. Industrial countries would not be buying rainforest hardwoods and timber had we not cut down our own trees long ago, nor would poachers in the Amazon jungle be slaughtering jaguar, ocelot, caiman, and otter if we did not provide lucrative markets for their skins in Berlin, Paris, and Tokyo.
  • • A single pond in Brazil can sustain a greater variety of fish than is found in all of Europe's rivers. 
    • A 25-acre plot of rainforest in Borneo may contain more than 700 species of trees - a number equal to the total tree diversity of North America. 
    • A single rainforest reserve in Peru is home to more species of birds than are found in the entire United States.  
    • One single tree in Peru was found to harbor forty-three different species of ants - a total that approximates the entire number of ant species in the British Isles.  
    • The number of species of fish in the Amazon exceeds the number found in the entire Atlantic Ocean.
  • The biodiversity of the tropical rainforest is so immense that less than 1 percent of its millions of species have been studied by scientists for their active constituents and their possible uses. When an acre of topical rainforest is lost, the impact on the number of plant and animal species lost and their possible uses is staggering. Scientists estimate that we are losing more than 137 species of plants and animals every single day because of rainforest deforestation.
  • Surprisingly, scientists have a better understanding of how many stars there are in the galaxy than they have of how many specie
  • s there are on Earth. Estimates vary from 2 million to 100 million species, with a best estimate of somewhere near 10 million; only 1.4 million of these species have actually been named.
  • Yet still the destruction continues. If deforestation continues at current rates, scientists estimate nearly 80 to 90 percent of tropical rainforest ecosystems will be destroyed by the year 2020. This destruction is the main force driving a species extinction rate unmatched in 65 million years.
  • The Amazon covers more than 1.2 billion acres, representing two-fifths of the enormous South American continent, and is found in nine South American countries: Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, French Guiana, and Suriname. With 2.5 million square miles of rainforest, the Amazon rainforest represents 54 percent of the total rainforests left on Earth.
  • The life force of the Amazon rainforest is the mighty Amazon River. It starts as a trickle high in the snow-capped Andes Mountains and flows more than 4,000 miles across the South American continent until it enters the Atlantic Ocean at Belem, Brazil, where it is 200 to 300 miles across, depending on the season. Even 1,000 miles inland it is still 7 miles wide. The river is so deep that ocean liners can travel up its length to 2,300 miles inland. The Amazon River flows through the center of the rainforest and is fed by 1,100 tributaries, 17 of which are more than 1,000 miles long. The Amazon is by far the largest watershed and largest river system in the world occupying over 6 million square kilometers. Over two-thirds of all the fresh water found on Earth is in the Amazon Basin's rivers, streams, and tributaries.
  • Commercial logging is the single largest cause of rainforest destruction, both directly and indirectly. Other activities destroying the rainforest, including clearing land for grazing animals and subsistence farming. The simple fact is that people are destroying the Amazon rainforest and the rest of the rainforests of the world because "they can't see the forest for the trees."
  • Two drugs obtained from a rainforest plant known as the Madagascar periwinkle, now extinct in the wild due to deforestation of the Madagascar rainforest, have increased the chances of survival for children with leukemia from 20 percent to 80 percent. Think about it: eight out of ten children are now saved, rather than eight of ten children dying from leukemia. How many children have been spared and how many more will continue to be spared because of this single rainforest plant? What if we had failed to discover this one important plant among millions before human activities had led to its extinction? When our remaining rainforests are gone, the rare plants and animals will be lost forever-and so will the possible cures for diseases like cancer they can provide.
  • In 1983, there were no U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturers involved in research programs to discover new drugs or cures from plants. Today, more than 100 pharmaceutical companies, including giants like Merck, Abbott, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Monsanto, Smith-Kline Beecham, as well as several branches of the U.S. government, including the National Cancer Institute, are engaged in plant-based research projects trying to find possible drugs to treat infections, cancer, and AIDS. Most of this research is currently taking place in the rainforest in an industry that is now called "bioprospecting." This new pharmacological industry draws together an unlikely confederacy: plant collectors and anthropologists; ecologists and conservationists; natural product companies and nutritional supplement manufacturers; AIDS and cancer researchers; executives in the world's largest drug companies; and native indigenous shamans. They are part of a radical experiment: to preserve the world's rainforests by showing how much more valuable they are standing than cut down. And it is a race against a clock whose every tick means another acre of charred forest. Yet, it is also a race that pits one explorer against another, for those who score the first big hit in chemical bioprospecting will secure wealth and a piece of scientific immortality.
  • After the Amerindians discovered America, about twenty millennia before Columbus, all their clothing, food, medicine, and shelter were derived from the forests. Those millennia gave the Indians time to discover and learn empirically the virtues and vices of the thousands of edible and medicinal species in the rainforest. More than 80 percent of the developed world's diet originated in the rainforest and from this empirical indigenous knowledge of the wealth of edible fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Of the estimated 3,000 edible fruits found in the rainforest, only 200 are cultivated for use today, despite the fact that the Indians used more than 1,500. Many secrets and untold treasures about the medicinal plants used by shamans, healers, and the indigenous people of the rainforest tribes await discovery. Long regarded as hocus-pocus by science, the empirical plant knowledge of the indigenous peoples is now thought by many to be the Amazon's new gold. Their use of the plants provides the bioprospector with the clues necessary to target specific species to research in the race for time before the species are lost to deforestation. More often, the race is defined as being the first pharmaceutical company to patent a new drug utilizing a newly discovered rainforest phytochemical-and, of course, to garner the profit
  • s.

      

    Indigenous People, A Valuable Resource

     

    Laboratory synthesis of new medicines is increasingly costly and not as fruitful as companies would lik
  • e. In the words of one major drug company executive, "Scientists may be able to make any molecule they can imagine on
  • a computer, but Mother Nature . . . is an infinitely more ingenious and exciting chemist." Scientists have developed new technologies to assess the chemical makeup of plants, and they realize that using medicinal plants identified by Indians makes research more efficient and less expensive.

  46 more annotations...

• 04 Jan 12
  

  deborah chen
  • short-sighted governments
  • timber
  • multi-national logging companie
  • active against cancer cells
  • harvesting it's many nuts, fruits, oil-producing plants, and medicinal plants, the rainforest has more economic value than if they were cut down to make grazing land for cattle or for timber.
  • creating a new source of income

  4 more annotations...

• 08 Dec 11
  

  Emily Brown

  facts

  Rainforest

• 06 Dec 11
  

  Michaela Reilly

  Rainforest

• 

  Monica Stipinovich

  deforestation

  • There were an estimated ten million Indians living in the Amazonian Rainforest  five centuries ago. Today there are less than 200,000.
  • • oxygen. More than 20 percent of the world oxygen is produced in the Amazon  Rainforest.  
       
    • More than half of the world's
• 01 Dec 11
  

  Gabby M
  • We are losing Earth's greatest biological treasures just as we are beginning to  ap
  • consequences
• 17 Nov 11
  

  Erin P
  • One and one-half acres of rainforest are lost every second
• 

  Nicole I

  rainforest facts deforestation

  • The Disappearing Rainforests
  • We are losing Earth's greatest biological treasures just as we are beginning to  appreciate their true value. Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land  surface; now they cover a mere 6% and experts estimate that the last remaining  rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years.
  • One and one-half acres of rainforest are lost every second with tragic  consequences for both developing and industrial countries.

  • Rainforest Action

  • THE IMPORTANCE OF THE RAINFOREST

  3 more annotations...

• 

  Eric S

  Good site.

  • We are losing Earth's greatest biological treasures just as we are beginning to  appreciate their true value. Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land  surface; now they cover a mere 6% and experts estimate that the last remaining  rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years.
  • One and one-half acres of rainforest are lost every second with tragic  consequences
  • Rainforests are being destroyed because the value of rainforest land is  perceived as only the value of its timber by short-sighted governments,  multi-national logging companies, and land owners.
  • Nearly half of the world's species of plants, animals and microorganisms will be  destroyed or severely threatened over the next quarter century due to rainforest  deforestation.
  • • In Brazil alone, European colonists have destroyed more than 90 indigenous  tribes since the 1900's. With them have gone centuries of accumulated knowledge  of the medicinal value of rainforest species. As their homelands continue to be  destroyed by deforestation, rainforest peoples are also disappearing.  
       
    • Most medicine men and shamans remaining in the Rainforests today are 70  years old or more. Each time a rainforest medicine man dies, it is as if a  library has burned down.

  3 more annotations...

• 13 Nov 11
  

  alex brown
  • ving for their people, se
  • Vincristine, extracted from the rainforest plant, periwinkle,
  • Currently, 121 prescription drugs currently sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. And while 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less than 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.
  • ving for their people, se
  • Edward O. Wilson
  • Edward O. Wilson
  • Edward O. Wilson
  • Edward O. Wilson
  • PHARMACY
  • rvice national debt, and contribute meaningfully to land use planning and conservation of natural resources.
  • mia from 20 percent to 80 percent. Think about it: eight out of ten children are now saved, rather than eight of ten children dying from leukemia. How many children have been spared and how many more will continue to be spared because of this single rainforest plant? What if we had failed to discover this one important plant among millions before human activities had led to its extinction? When
  • mia from 20 percent to 80 percent. Think about it: eight out of ten children are now saved, rather than eight of ten children dying from leukemia. How many children have been spared and how many more will continue to be spared because of this single rainforest plant? What if we had failed to discover this one important plant among millions before human activities had led to its extinction? When
  • from 20 percent to 80 percent. Think about it: eight out of ten children are now saved, rather than eight of ten children dying from leukemia. How many children have been spared and how many more will continue to be spared because of this single rainforest plant? What if we had failed to discover this one important plant among millions before human activities had led to its extinction? When our remaining rainforests are gone, the rare plants and animals will be lost forever-and so will the possible cures for diseases like cancer they can provide.

     

    No one can challenge the fact that we are still largely dependent on plants for treating our ailments. Almost 90 percent of people in developing countries still rely on traditional medicine, based largely on different species of plants and animals, for their primary health care. In the United States, some 25 percent of prescriptions are filled with drugs whose active ingredients are extracted or derived from plants. By 1980 sales of these plant-based drugs in the United States amounted to some $4.5 billion annually. Worldwide sales of these plant-based drugs were estimated at $40 billion in 1990. Currently 121 prescription drugs sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources from only 90 species of plants. Still more drugs are derived from animals and microorganisms.

     

    More than 25 percent of the active ingredients in today's cancer-fighting drugs come from organisms found only in the rainforest. The U.S. National Cancer Institute has identified more than 3,000 plants that are active against cancer cells, and 70 percent of these plants are found only in the rainforest. In the thousands of species of rainforest plants that have not been analyzed are many more thousands of unknown plant chemicals, many of which have evolved to protect the plants from diseases. These plant chemicals may well help us in our own ongoing struggle with constantly evolving pathogens, including bacteria, viruses, and fungi that are mutating against our mainstrea
  • In the words of one major drug company executive, "Scientists may be able to make any molecule they can imagine on a computer, but Mother Nature . . . is an infinitely more ingenious and exciting chemist."
  • rvice national debt, and contribute meaningfully to land use planning and conservation of natural resources.
  • The World Resources Institute estimated that the demand for rice, wheat, and corn is expected to grow by 40% by 2020, increasing irrigation water demands by 50% or more. They further reported that the demand for wood could double by the year 2050; unfortunately, it is still the tropical forests of the world that supply the bulk of the world's demand for wood.
  • The World Resources Institute estimated that the demand for rice, wheat, and corn is expected to grow by 40% by 2020, increasing irrigation water demands by 50% or more. They further reported that the demand for wood could double by the year 2050; unfortunately, it is still the tropical forests of the world that supply the bulk of the world's demand for wood.
  • They further reported that the demand for wood could double by the year 2050; unfortunately, it is still the tropical forests of the world that supply the bulk of the world's demand for wood.
  • Massive deforestation brings with it many ugly consequences-air and water pollution, soil erosion, malaria epidemics, the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the eviction and decimation of indigenous Indian tribes, and the loss of biodiversity through extinction of plants and animals. Fewer rainforests mean less rain, less oxygen for us to breathe, and an increased threat from global warming.
  • If nothing is done to curb this trend, the entire Amazon could well be gone within fifty years.
  • They further reported that the demand for wood could double by the year 2050; unfortunately, it is still the tropical forests of the world that supply the bulk of the world's demand for wood.
  • They further reported that the demand for wood could double by the year 2050; unfortunately, it is still the tropical forests of the world that supply the bulk of the world's demand for wood.
  • The World Resources Institute estimated that the demand for rice, wheat, and corn is expected to grow by 40% by 2020, increasing irrigation water demands by 50% or more. They further reported that the demand for wood could double by the year 2050; unfortunately, it is still the tropical forests of the world that supply the bulk of the world's demand for wood.
  • owerful anticancer drugs. It has dramatically increased the survival rate for acute childhood leukemia since its discovery.

  22 more annotations...

• 03 Nov 11
  

  Alyssa D
  • Experts estimates that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every  single day due to rainforest deforestation. That equates to 50,000 species a  year. As the rainforest species disappear, so do many possible cures for  life-threatening diseases. Currently, 121 prescription drugs sold worldwide come  from plant-derived sources. While 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived  from rainforest
  • ingredients, less that 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by  scientists.
  • In Brazil alone, European colonists have destroyed more than 90 indigenous  tribes since the 1900's. With them have gone centuries of accumulated knowledge  of the medicinal value of rainforest species. As their homelands continue to be  destroyed by deforestation, rainforest peoples are also disappearing.
  • One hectare (2.47 acres) may contain over 750 types of trees and 1500 species of  higher plants.
  •  
    • A single pond in Brazil can sustain a greater variety of fish than is found  in all of Europe's rivers.  
    • A 25-acre plot of rainforest in Borneo may contain more than 700 species of  trees - a number equal to the total tree diversity of North America.  
    • A single rainforest reserve in Peru is home to more species of birds than  are found in the entire United States.  
    • One single tree in Peru was found to harbor forty-three different species of  ants - a total that approximates the entire number of ant species in the British  Isles.  
    • The number of species of fish in the Amazon exceeds the number found in the  entire Atlantic Ocean.

  3 more annotations...

• 31 Oct 11
  

  Carolyn Black

  Article about the rainforest

  Music Project

  • Currently, 121 prescription drugs sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. While 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less that 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.
  • Most medicine men and shamans remaining in the Rainforests today are 70 years old or more. Each time a rainforest medicine man dies, it is as if a library has burned down.
  • The Amazon Rainforest has been described as the "Lungs of our Planet" because it provides the essential environmental world service of continuously recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen. More than 20 percent of the world oxygen is produced in the Amazon Rainforest.
  • • More than half of the world's estimated 10 million species of plants, animals and insects live in the tropical rainforests. One-fifth of the world's fresh water is in the Amazon Basin.
     
    • One hectare (2.47 acres) may contain over 750 types of tree
  • and 1500 species of higher plants.
  • The U.S. National Cancer Institute has identified 3000 plants that are active against cancer cells. 70% of these plants are found in the rainforest. Twenty-five percent of the active ingredients in today's cancer-fighting drugs come from organisms found only in the rainforest.
  • Vincristine, extracted from the rainforest plant, periwinkle, is one of the world's most powerful anticancer drugs
  • Experts agree that by leaving the rainforests intact and harvesting it's many nuts, fruits, oil-producing plants, and medicinal plants, the rainforest has more economic value than if they were cut down to make grazing land for cattle or for timber.
  • The latest statistics show that rainforest land converted to cattle operations yields the land owner $60 per acre and if timber is harvested, the land is worth $400 per acre. However, if these renewable and sustainable resources are harvested, the land will yield the land owner $2,400 per acre.
  • • If managed properly, the rainforest can provide the world's need for these natural resources on a perpetual basis.
      
    • Promoting the use of these sustainable and renewable sources could stop the destruction of the rainforests. By creating a new source of income harvesting the medicinal plants, fruits nuts, oil and other sustainable resources, the rainforests is be more valuable alive than cut and burned.
      
    • Sufficient demand of sustainable and ecologically harvested rainforest products is necessary for preservation efforts to succeed. Purchasing sustainable rainforest products can effect positive change by creating a market for these products while supporting the native people's economy and provides the economic solution and alternative to cutting the forest just for the value of its timber.
     
  • Rainforests have evolved over millions of years to turn into the incredibly complex environments they are today. Rainforests represent a store of living and breathing renewable natural resources that for eons, by virtue of their richness in both animal and plant species, have contributed a wealth of resources for the survival and well-being of humankind. These resources have included basic food supplies, clothing, shelter, fuel, spices, industrial raw materials, and medicine for all those who have lived in the majesty of the forest.
  • world population has increased by 30 percent. Consumption of everything on the planet has risen- at a cost to our ecosystems. In 2001,
  • The World Resources Institute estimated that the demand for rice, wheat, and corn is expected to grow by 40% by 2020, increasing irrigation water demands by 50% or more. They further reported that the demand for wood could double by the year 2050; unfortunately, it is still the tropical forests of the world that supply the bulk of the world's demand for wood.
  • Massive deforestation brings with it many ugly consequences-air and water pollution, soil erosion, malaria epidemics, the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the eviction and decimation of indigenous Indian tribes, and the loss of biodiversity through extinction of plants and animals. Fewer rainforests mean less rain, less oxygen for us to breathe, and an increased threat from global warming.
  • The worst thing that can happen during the 1980s is not energy  depletion, economic collapses, limited nuclear war, or conquest by a totalitarian government. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired within a few generations. The one process ongoing in the 1980s that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly that our descendants are least likely to forgive us for."
  • THE AMAZON RAINFOREST . . . THE LAST FRONTIER ON EARTH
  • The Amazon River
  • Largest Collection of Plant and Animal Species
  • Scarring and Loss of Diversity
  • Like other rainforests already lost forever, the land is being cleared for logging timber, large-scale cattle ranching, mining operations, government road building and hydroelectric schemes, military operations, and the subsistence agriculture of peasants and landless settlers. Sadder still, in many places the rainforests are burnt simply to provide charcoal to power industrial plants in the area.
  • Commercial logging is the single largest cause of rainforest destruction, both directly and indirectly.
  • Logging tropical hardwoods like teak, mahogany, rosewood, and other timber for furniture, building materials, charcoal, and other wood products is big business and big profits.
  • The demand, extraction, and consumption of tropical hardwoods has been so massive that some countries that have been traditional exporters of tropical hardwoods are now importing them because they have already exhausted their supply by destroying their native rainforests in slash-and-burn operations.
  • It is anticipated that the Philippines, Malaysia, the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and Thailand will soon follow, as all these countries will run out of rainforest hardwood timber for export within five years
  • The cardboard packing and the wood chipboard industries use 15-ton machines that gobble up the rainforest with 8-foot cutting discs that have eight blades revolving 320 times a minute. These machines that cut entire trees into chips half the size of a matchbox can gobble up more than 200 species of trees in mere minutes.
  • Logging rainforest timber is a large economic source, and in many cases, the main source of revenue for servicing the national debt of these developing countries
  • . Logging profits are real to these countries that must service their debts, but they are fleeting. Governments are selling their assets too cheaply, and once the rainforest is gone, their source of income will also be gone. Sadly, most of the real profits of the timber trade are made not by the developing countries, but by multinational companies and industrialists of the Northern Hemisphere. These huge, profit-driven logging companies pay governments a fraction of the timber's worth for large logging concessions on immense tracts of rainforest land and reap huge profits by harvesting the timber in the most economical manner feasible with little regard to the destruction left in their wake.
  • Logging concessions in the Amazon are sold for as little as $2 per acre, with logging companies felling timber worth thousands of dollars per acre. Governments are selling their natural resources, hawking for pennies resources that soon will be worth billions of dollars. Some of these government concessions and land deals made with industrialists make the sale of Manhattan for $24 worth of trinkets look shrewd. In 1986 a huge industrial timber corporation bought thousands of acres in the Borneo rainforest by giving 2,000 Malaysian dollars to twelve longhouses of local tribes. This sum amounted to the price of two bottles of beer for each member of the community. Since then, this company and others have managed to extract and destroy about a third of the Borneo rainforest - about 6.9 million acres - and the local tribes have been evicted from the area or forced to work for the logging companies at slave wages.
  • Fuel Wood and the Paper Industry
  • Grazing Land
  • Subsistence Farming
  • Leading the Threat: Governments
  • RAINFORESTS, PHARMACY TO THE WORLD
  • Bioprospecting
  • UNLOCKING THE SECRETS OF THE RAINFOREST
  • Indigenous People, A Valuable Resource
  • But Few Benefits for the Indigenous People
  • LOSING THE KNOWLEDGE
  • THE SOLUTION: PROFITS WITHOUT PLUNDER
  • The problem and the solution of the destruction of the rainforest are both economic. Governments need money to service their debts, squatters and settlers need money to feed their families, and companies need to make profits
  • The simple fact is that the rainforest is being destroyed for the income and profits it yields, however fleeting.
  • Money still makes the world go around . . . even in South America and even in the rainforest. But this also means that if landowners, governments, and those living in the rainforest today were given a viable economic reason not to destroy the rainforest, it could and would be saved. And this viable economic alternative does exist, and it is working today. Many organizations have demonstrated that if the medicinal plants, fruits, nuts, oils, and other resources like rubber, chocolate, and chicle (used to make chewing gums) are harvested sustainably, rainforest land has much more economic value today and more long-term income and profits for the future than if just timber is harvested or burned down for cattle or farming operations. In fact, the latest statistics prove that rainforest land converted to cattle operations yields the landowner $60 per acre; if timber is harvested, the land is worth $400 per acre. However, if medicinal plants, fruits, nuts, rubber, chocolate, and other renewable and sustainable resources are harvested, the land will yield the landowner $2,400 per acre. This value provides an income not only today, but year after year - for generations
  • These sustainable resources - not the trees - are the true wealth of the rainforest.

  41 more annotations...

• 30 Oct 11
  

  Conor P
• 12 Oct 11
  

  Megan Olson

  rainforest facts deforestation biomes amazon brazil geography habitats

• 26 Sep 11
  

  Sophie g

  Great website(used it last year)

  rainforest project

• 23 Sep 11
  

  Ananya b

  A nice place to get information on the rainforest but might not be ideal to use only this website

  Rainforest biome

  • We are losing Earth's greatest biological treasures just as we are beginning to appreciate their true value. Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6% and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years.
  • • Rainforests are being destroyed because the value of rainforest land is perceived as only the value of its timber by short-sighted governments, multi-national logging companies, and land owners.
      
  • There were an estimated ten million Indians living in the Amazonian Rainforest five centuries ago. Today there are less than 200,000.
  • One hectare (2.47 acres) may contain over 750 types of trees and 1500 species of higher plants.
  • At least 3000 fruits are found in the rainforests; of these only 200 are now in use in the Western World. The Indians of the rainforest use over 2,000.

  3 more annotations...

• 

  Amelia w

  good information website

  rainforest facts

  • One and one-half acres of rainforest are lost every second with tragic consequences for both developing and industrial countries.
  • Experts estimates that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every single day due to rainforest deforestation.
  • That equates to 50,000 species a year.
  • Currently, 121 prescription drugs sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources.
  • While 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less that 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.
  • There were an estimated ten million Indians living in the Amazonian Rainforest five centuries ago. Today there are less than 200,000.
  • One hectare (2.47 acres) may contain over 750 types of trees and 1500 species of higher plants.
  • At least 3000 fruits are fou

    nd in the rainforests; of these only 200 are now in use in the Western World. The Indians of the rainforest use over 2,000.
  • A single pond in Brazil can sustain a greater variety of fish than is found in all of Europe's rivers.
  • A 25-acre plot of rainforest in Borneo may contain more than 700 species of trees - a number equal to the total tree diversity of North America.
  • A single rainforest reserve in Peru is home to more species of birds than are found in the entire United States.
  • One single tree in Peru was found to harb

    or forty-three different species of ants - a total that approximates the entire number of ant species in the British Isles.
  • • The number of species of fish in the Amazon exceeds the number found in the entire Atlantic Ocean
  • If Amazonia were a country, it would be the ninth largest in the world. The Amazon rainforest, the world's greatest remaining natural resource, is the most powerful and bioactively diverse natural phenomenon on the planet. It has been described as the "lungs of our planet" because it provides the essential service of continuously recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen. It is estimated that more than 20 percent of Earth's oxygen is produced in this area.
  • Commercial logging is the single largest cause of rainforest destruction, both directly and indirectly. Other activities destroying the rainforest, including clearing land for grazing animals and subsistence farming. The simple fact is that people are destroying the Amazon rainforest and the rest of the rainforests of the world because "they can't see the forest for the trees."
  • Edward O. Wilson estimates that we are losing 137 plant and animal species every single day. That's 50,000 species a year!

  14 more annotations...

• 16 Sep 11
  

  Sam Fox

  Facts about the rainforest and info on deforestation. Also includes a section to help with school project.

  rainforest facts deforestation amazon biomes

• 12 Sep 11
  

  Kelly Kai Wen Y

  Great facts about the Rainforest disappearing so quickly.

  Rainforest Facts

  • The Disappearing Rainforests
  • One and one-half acres of rainforest are lost every second with tragic consequences
  • f

    or both developing and industrial countries.

  1 more annotation...

• 

  Jemma M

  Epik site about the rainforest and deforestation facts!

  Rainforest Biodiversity Ecosystems facts Biomes

  • The Disappearing Rainforests
  • Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface;
  • One and one-half acres of rainforest are lost every second with tragic consequences for both developing and industrial countries.

  1 more annotation...

• 11 Sep 11
  

  Khalid Stevenson

  Between May 2000 and August 2005, Brazil lost more than 132,000 square kilometers of forest—an area larger than Greece—and since 1970, over 600,000 square kilometers (232,000 square miles) of Amazon rainforest have been destroyed. Why is Brazil losing so much forest? What can be done to slow deforestation?
  
  
  
  Why is the Brazilian Amazon being Destroyed?
  In many tropical countries, the majority of deforestation results from the actions of poor subsistence cultivators. However, in Brazil only about one-third of recent deforestation can be linked to "shifted" cultivators. A large portion of deforestation in Brazil can be attributed to land clearing for pastureland by commercial and speculative interests, misguided government policies, inappropriate World Bank projects, and commercial exploitation of forest resources. For effective action it is imperative that these issues be addressed. Focusing solely on the promotion of sustainable use by local people would neglect the most important forces behind deforestation in Brazil.
  
  
  
  Deforestation Figures for Brazil
  
  
  
  Year Deforestation
  [sq mi] Deforestation
  [sq km] Change
  [%]
  
  1988 8,127 21,050
  1989 6,861 17,770 -16%
  1990 5,301 13,730 -23%
  1991 4,259 11,030 -20%
  1992 5,323 13,786 25%
  1993 5,751 14,896 8%
  1994 5,751 14,896 0%
  1995 11,220 29,059 95%
  1996 7,012 18,161 -38%
  1997 5,107 13,227 -27%
  1998 6,712 17,383 31%
  1999 6,664 17,259 -1%
  2000 7,037 18,226 6%
  2001 7,014 18,165 0%
  2002 8,260 21,651 17%
  2003 9,805 25,396 19%
  2004 10,722 27,772 9%
  2005 7,341 19,014 -31%
  2006 5,515 14,285 -49%
  2007 4,498 11,651 -18%
  2008 4,984 12,911 11%
  2009 2,889 7,484 -42%
  
  All figures derived from official National
  Institute of Space Research (INPE) data. Individual state figures.
  
  *For the 1978-1988 period the figures represent
  the average annual rates of deforestation.
  
  
  
  
  
  Deforestation in Brazil: This image of the southern Amazon uses satellite data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite collected in 2000 and 2001 to classify the terrain into three separate land surface categories: forest (red), herbaceous (non-woody) vegetation like grasses (green), and bare ground (blue). The Amazon's numerous rivers appear white.
  
  
  Brazilian deforestation is strongly correlated to the economic health of the country: the decline in deforestation from 1988-1991 nicely matched the economic slowdown during the same period, while the rocketing rate of deforestation from 1993-1998 paralleled Brazil's period of rapid economic growth. During lean times, ranchers and developers do not have the cash to rapidly expand their pasturelands and operations, while the government lacks funds to sponsor highways and colonization programs and grant tax breaks and subsidies to forest exploiters.
  
  A relatively small percentage of large landowners clear vast sections of the Amazon for cattle pastureland. Large tracts of forest are cleared and sometimes planted with African savanna grasses for cattle feeding. In many cases, especially during periods of high inflation, land is simply cleared for investment purposes. When pastureland prices exceed forest land prices (a condition made possible by tax incentives that favor pastureland over natural forest), forest clearing is a good hedge against inflation.
  
  Such favorable taxation policies, combined with government subsidized agriculture and colonization programs, encourage the destruction of the Amazon. The practice of low taxes on income derived from agriculture and tax rates that favor pasture over forest overvalues agriculture and pastureland and makes it profitable to convert natural forest for these purposes when it normally would not be so.
  
  

  • • Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface;   
      15
      now  they cover a mere 6% and experts estimate that the last remaining   rainforests could be consumed in less than 40  years.   
       
    • One and one-half acres of rainforest are lost every second with tragic  consequences for both developing and industrial countries.  
       
    • Rainforests are being destroyed because the value of rainforest land is  perceived as only the value of its timber by short-sighted governments,  multi-national logging companies, and land owners.  
       
    •   
      1
      Nearly  half of the world's species of plants, animals and microorganisms will be  destroyed or severely threatened over   the next  quarter century due to rainforest deforestation. 
  • There were an estimated ten million Indians living in the Amazonian Rainforest  five centuries ago. Today there are less than 200,000
  • • In Brazil alone, European colonists have destroyed more than 90 indigenous  tribes since the 1900's. With them have gone centuries of accumulated knowledge  of the medicinal value of rainforest species. As their homelands continue to be  destroyed by deforestation, rainforest peoples are also disappearing.  
       
    • Most medicine men and shamans remaining in the Rainforests today are 70  years old or more. Each time a rainforest medicine man dies, it is as if a  library has burned down.  
       
    • When a medicine man dies without passing his arts on to the next generation,  the tribe and the world loses thousands of years of irreplaceable knowledge  about medicinal plants.

  1 more annotation...

• 09 Sep 11
  

  Amanda Herring

  thematic unit rainforest facts

• 01 Sep 11
  

  Alex K

  rainforest facts deforestation amazon biomes habitats

• 31 Aug 11
  

  Elang P

  CHECK IT OUT !!! 
  
  info about deforestation

  rainforest deforestation facts

  • Experts estimates that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every single day due to rainforest deforestation. That equates to 50,000 species a year. As the rainforest species disappear, so do many possible cures for life-threatening diseases. Currently, 121 prescription drugs sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. While 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less that 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.
• 

  Ethan P

  This is an awesome website because it tells us all about the declining numbers of rain forests. It is great for the people who care about rain forests and want to take action. 

  deforestation Rainforest

  • Experts estimates that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every single day due to rainforest deforestation. That equates to 50,000 species a year
• 

  Charlotte B

  a lot of information about Rainforests and them being cut down.I highlighted the captains.

  Rainforest

  • The Disappearing Rainforests
  • The Wealth of the Rainforests
  • Rainforest Action
  • THE IMPORTANCE OF THE RAINFOREST
  • THE BIODIVERSITY OF THE RAINFOREST
  • THE AMAZON RAINFOREST . . . THE LAST FRONTIER ON EARTH
  • THE DRIVING FORCES OF DESTRUCTION
  • RAINFORESTS, PHARMACY TO THE WORLD
  • UNLOCKING THE SECRETS OF THE RAINFOREST
  • LOSING THE KNOWLEDGE
  • THE SOLUTION: PROFITS WITHOUT PLUNDER

  9 more annotations...

• 

  Gregory B

  A page on biodiversity in rainforests

  Rainforest Biodiversity

• 29 Aug 11
  

  Alexandre M

  this website has lots of information about rainforest trees.

  facts rainforest

  • The Disappearing Rainforests
• 24 Aug 11
  

  Justin J
• 

  Arvish G

  this is an interesting page which tells you about the rainforest and how inportant it is

  uoi

  • We are losing Earth's greatest biological treasures just as we are beginning to appreciate their true value. Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6% and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years.
• 

  Rohan K

  This is a very useful website for learning about our dying rainforest.  

  rainforest

• 

  Akanksha S
• 

  Gabriel D
• 

  Chloe V
• 

  Jasmine Z
• 

  Frederick P
• 10 Jun 11
  

  Hannah Dobbin

  Rain forests

  deforestation rainforest facts

• 05 Jun 11
  

  rkuhle
  • Experts estimates that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every single day due to rainforest deforestation. That equates to 50,000 species a year.
  • Currently, 121 prescription drugs sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. While 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less that 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.
  • One hectare (2.47 acres) may contain over 750 types of trees and 1500 species of higher plants.
  • In 1983, there were no U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturers involved in research programs to discover new drugs or cures from plants. Today, over 100 pharmaceutical companies and several branches of the US government, including giants like Merck and The National Cancer Institute, are engaged in plant research projects for possible drugs and cures for viruses, infections, cancer, and even AIDS.
  • Unbelievably, more than 200,000 acres of rainforest are burned every day. That is more than 150 acres lost every minute of every day, and 78 million acres lost every year! More than 20 percent of the Amazon rainforest is already gone, and much more is severely threatened as the destruction continues. It is estimated that the Amazon alone is vanishing at a rate of 20,000 square miles a year. If nothing is done to curb this trend, the entire Amazon could well be gone within fifty years.
  • A 25-acre plot of rainforest in Borneo may contain more than 700 species of trees - a number equal to the total tree diversity of North America.
  • The biodiversity of the tropical rainforest is so immense that less than 1 percent of its millions of species have been studied by scientists for their active constituents and their possible uses.
  • Scientists estimate that we are losing more than 137 species of plants and animals every single day because of rainforest deforestation.
  • Rainforests currently provide sources for one-fourth of today's medicines, and 70 percent of the plants found to have anticancer properties are found only in the rainforest.
  • Two drugs obtained from a rainforest plant known as the Madagascar periwinkle, now extinct in the wild due to deforestation of the Madagascar rainforest, have increased the chances of survival for children with leukemia from 20 percent to 80 percent. Think about it: eight out of ten children are now saved, rather than eight of ten children dying from leukemia.
  • More than 25 percent of the active ingredients in today's cancer-fighting drugs come from organisms found only in the rainforest. The U.S. National Cancer Institute has identified more than 3,000 plants that are active against cancer cells, and 70 percent of these plants are found only in the rainforest.

  9 more annotations...

• 03 Jun 11
  

  Jenna Raygor

  rainforest

• 01 Jun 11
  

  Sheryl Mills
• 30 May 11
  

  Rima Touya

  This facts tell us information about the disappearing rainforest and other interesting facts

  WWF_Activist

  • rainforest
• 25 May 11
  

  sue gibson

  good information resource

  rainforest facts deforestation brazil amazon

• 24 May 11
  

  Poonam Oberoi

  Logging

  • More than 20 percent of rainforest in the Amazon has been razed and is gone forever.
  • Like other rainforests already lost forever, the land is being cleared for logging timber, large-scale cattle ranching, mining operations, government road building and hydroelectric schemes
  • Commercial logging is the single largest cause of rainforest destruction, both directly and indirectly.
  • Logging tropical hardwoods like teak, mahogany, rosewood, and other timber for furniture, building materials, charcoal, and other wood products is big business and big profits. Several species of tropical hardwoods are imported by developed counties, including the United States, just to build coffins that are then buried or burned.
  • The demand, extraction, and consumption of tropical hardwoods has been so massive that some countries that have been traditional exporters of tropical hardwoods are now importing them because they have already exhausted their supply by destroying their native rainforests in slash-and-burn operations. It is anticipated that the Philippines, Malaysia, the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and Thailand will soon follow, as all these countries will run out of rainforest hardwood timber for export within five years

  3 more annotations...

• 23 May 11
  

  danial wagner
• 

  Annabelle Cheng

  This website has a lot of information on indigenous people: what are happening to them, and what knowledge they hold to medinces.

  Indigenous peoples

  • In Brazil alone, European colonists have destroyed more than 90 indigenous tribes since the 1900's. With them have gone centuries of accumulated knowledge of the medicinal value of rainforest species. As their homelands continue to be destroyed by deforestation, rainforest peoples are also disappearing.
  • Massive deforestation brings with it many ugly consequences-air and water pollution, soil erosion, malaria epidemics, the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the eviction and decimation of indigenous Indian tribes, and the loss of biodiversity through extinction of plants and animals. Fewer rainforests mean less rain, less oxygen for us to breathe, and an increased threat from global warming.
  • The majority of our current plant-derived drugs were discovered by examining the traditional use of plants by the indigenous people who lived where the plants grew and flourished. History has shown that the situation with the rainforest is no different, and bioprospectors now are working side by side with rainforest tribal shamans and herbal healers to learn the wealth of their plant knowledge and about the many uses of indigenous plants.
  • More than 80 percent of the developed world's diet originated in the rainforest and from this empirical indigenous knowledge of the wealth of edible fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Of the estimated 3,000 edible fruits found in the rainforest, only 200 are cultivated for use today, despite the fact that the Indians used more than 1,500. Many secrets and untold treasures about the medicinal plants used by shamans, healers, and the indigenous people of the rainforest tribes await discovery. Long regarded as hocus-pocus by science, the empirical plant knowledge of the indigenous peoples is now thought by many to be the Amazon's new gold. Their use of the plants provides the bioprospector with the clues necessary to target specific species to research in the race for time before the species are lost to deforestation.
  • Destruction of our rainforests is not only causing the extinction of plant and animal species, it is also wiping out indigenous peoples who live in the rainforest. Obviously, rainforests are not idle land, nor are they uninhabited. Indigenous peoples have developed technologies and resource use systems that have allowed them to live on the land, farming, hunting, and gathering in a complex sustainable relationship with the forest. But when rainforests die, so do the indigenous peoples.
  • Today there are fewer than 250,000 indigenous people of Brazil surviving this catastrophe, and still the destruction continues. These surviving indigenous people still demonstrate the remarkable diversity of the rainforest because they comprise 215 ethnic groups with 170 different languages. Nationwide, they live in 526 territories, which together compose an area of 190 million acres . . . twice the size of California. About 188 million acres of this land is inside the Brazilian Amazon, in the states of Acre, Amapa, Amazonas, Maranhao, Mato Grosso, Para, Rondonia, Roraima, and Tocantins. There may also be 50 or more indigenous groups still living in the depths of the rainforest that have never had contact with the outside world.
  • Thousands of peasants, rubber tappers, and indigenous tribes have been killed in Amazonia in the past decade in violent conflicts over forest resources and land.
  • When these indigenous peoples are lost forever, gone too will be their empirical knowledge representing centuries of accumulated knowledge of the medicinal value of plant and animal species in the rainforest. Very few tribes have been subjected to a complete ethnobotanical analysis of their plant knowledge, and most medicine men and shamans remaining in the rainforests today are seventy years old or more. When a medicine man dies without passing his arts on to the next generation, the tribe and the world lose thousands of years of irreplaceable knowledge about medicinal plants. Each time a rainforest medicine man dies, it is as if a library has burned down.

  6 more annotations...

• 18 May 11
  

  gabriella mynda
  • • One and one-half acres of rainforest are lost every second with tragic consequences for both developing and industrial countries.
     
    • Rainforests are being destroyed because the value of rainforest land is perceived as only the value of its timber by short-sighted governments, multi-national logging companies, and land owners.
  • At least 80% of the developed world's diet originated in the tropical rainforest. Its bountiful gifts to the world include fruits like avocados, coconuts, figs, oranges, lemons, grapefruit, bananas, guavas, pineapples, mangos and tomatoes; vegetables including corn, potatoes, rice, winter squash and yams; spices like black pepper, cayenne, chocolate, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, sugar cane, tumeric, coffee and vanilla and nuts including Brazil nuts and cashews.
• 16 May 11
  

  Samantha Scott
• 

  esther_loong
  • Most rainforests are cleared by chainsaws, bulldozers and fires for its timber value and
  • 
• 13 May 11
  

  Frank Dwyer

  rainforest facts

• 10 May 11
  

  Jolene Leonardi

  Rainforest facts

• 26 Apr 11
  

  Kristy Waddell
• 19 Apr 11
  

  awoods1

  toulmin

Public Stiky Notes

• 
  l k on 2010-05-10
  AWESOME facts but I will like to know how deforestation
  effects the animals and WHICH animal it affects the most
• 
  Michael C. on 2010-02-19
  YOU KNOW I HAVE A PIE PLATE AND I AM EATING IT
• 
  Michael C. on 2010-02-18
  got money
• 
  Michael C. on 2010-02-18
  I totally agree audrey
• 
  Michael C. on 2010-02-18
  do i care dawson malinski guy
• 
  dawson m on 2010-02-18
  i like pancakes!
• 
  dawson m on 2010-02-18
  roflmao!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• 
  Michael C. on 2010-02-18
  dawson don't say bad stuff
• 
  dawson m on 2010-02-11
  poooooop
• 
  dawson m on 2010-02-11
  any1 wanna chat?
• 
  dawson m on 2010-02-11
  i like foood
• 
  dawson m on 2010-02-11
  =)
• 
  dawson m on 2010-02-11
  yea i agree =)
• 
  Clarissa Garcia on 2009-10-21
  you are right!!!!
  :D
• 
  Audrey C on 2009-10-05
  Why won't we just stop this it's just ridiculous! Can't we focus on protecting the rainforest, making it grow, flourish and then we chop some!
• 
  Michael C. on 2010-02-19
  I Know
• 
  Rajkumar R on 2009-09-10
  That is true

Page Comments

• 
  Courtney Goad on 2006-10-18
  This website has a vast variety of information about rainforests. I focused on the reading about the indigenous poeple and thier knowledge about medicinal plants, which turned out to be very interesting.
• 
  Elizabeth Holman on 2006-11-28
  This website has quite a bit of information on the rainforest. It's interesting to read facts about where our colony is located. This webpage has quite a few interesting facts about the animals, plant life, and the kind of people that live there
• 
  jeremy gilbert on 2012-06-22
  shut up you idiot

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