Facts About the Rainforest You Need to Know

By Annie Horkan

Every second, a piece of rainforest the size of a football field is being destroyed while we go about our business. Did you know that rainforests are being destroyed because the value of rainforest land is perceived as only the value of its timber by short-sighted governments, land owners and global companies seeking to extract its wealth.

The rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface, and now they only cover a mere 6%. It is being estimated that in less than 40 years the last remaining rainforests could disappear forever. Almost half of the world's species of plants and animals that dwell in the rainforest may soon disappear completely as a result of rainforest deforestation. We are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every single day due to rainforest deforestation which equates to 50,000 species a year and rising.

Many possible cures for life-threatening diseases may now never be found because of the extinction of so many rainforest species. Today, 121 prescription drugs sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources.  Less than 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists while about 25% of all Western pharmaceuticals are made from rainforest plants.

It is estimated that more than 90 indigenous tribal people have been destroyed by colonists since the 1900's in Brazil alone, and with them have gone centuries of accumulated knowledge of the medicinal value of rainforest species, and all that wisdom. Today there are less than 200,000 Indians living in the Amazon Rainforest when five centuries ago there were an estimated ten million. The world loses thousands of years of irreplaceable knowledge about medicinal plants when a medicine man dies, and has failed to pass on his wisdom to the next generation.

Rainforests are so biologically diverse that the loss of them will have a devastating impact on the whole world. The destruction of rainforest species and rainforest habitats is apt to be the one thing our children will never forgive us for.

More facts

There are more varieties of fish in a single pond in Brazil than all the rivers combined in Europe. The total tree diversity in North America is about 700 varieties. This same amount is found in a single 25 acre plot in Borneo. More species of birds are found in a single Peruvian rainforest reserve than in all of the United States. Forty-three different species of ants were found in just a single tree in Peru. The number of different fish species in the entire Atlantic ocean is surpassed by the number of fish species in the Amazon river alone.

Today, 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, much less identified and studied.

We must stop destroying the rainforest. These facts about the rainforest are crucial. It is vital that we learn all we can about rainforests before humanity makes an irreversible mistake. It is estimated that ninety percent of all rainforest ecosystems will be destroyed by 2020 if deforestation continues at the current rate. There is no more time.

You can help the rainforest by owning a piece of it!
http://www.helprainforest.org
Determined to help save the rainforest before it is too late.
Annie Horkan

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