Tropical rainforests and their vulnerability

• Rainforests once covered 14 percent of the Earth's land surface, now they cover 6 percent and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years.
  • Globally 2.4 (1 hectare) acres of rainforest have been destroyed every second... it is the equivalent of two US football fields put together.
  • 149 acres (60 hectares) have been destroyed a minute.
  • 214,000 acres (86,000) per day: an area larger than NYC.
  • 78 million acres (31 million hectares per year: an area larger than Poland.
  • In Brazil an estimation of 5.4 million acres have been destroyed per year. (estimate averaged for period 1979-1990)

• Rainforests are being destroyed because the value of this land is perceived as only the value of it's timber by short sighted governments, multi-national logging companies and land owners.
• Commercial logging => teak, mahogany, rosewood etc.... for furniture, building materials, charcoal for big businesses and big profits. Comaines: Texaco, Mitsubishi corp. Unocoal...
• Governments and their development of natural resources. control 805 of rainforests
• National debt=> World Bank
• Logging rainforest timber => $$large economic resource
• Composition of the soil, nutrients are locked up in the trees, less than 10% of the Amazonian soils are suitable for agriculture.
• subsistence farming
• "squatter's rights"
• cattle ranching
• mining
• oil extraction
• hydroelectric dams

• The loss of tropical rainforests may lead to devastating world impact, rainforests are so biologically diverse

• consider this:

• Consider this.
  • A single pond in Brazil can sustain a greater variety of fish than are found in all of Europe's rivers;
  • over 2000 species of fish have been identified in the Amazon Basin - more species than the entire Atlantic ocean.
  • a 25 acre plot of rainforest in Borneo may contain over 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 the entire United States.
  • One single tree in Peru was found to harbor 43 different species of ants - a total that approximates the entire species of the British Isles.
• The biodiversity of the tropical rainforest e.g.: less than 1% of its millions of species have been studied by scientists for possible uses by man. Scientific experts estimate loss of 137 species of plants, animals and insects everyday.
• consequences are air/water pollution, soil erosion, malaria epidemics, release of carbon dioxide, eviction of tribes, loss of bio-diversity and of species becoming extinct.
• Carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere from fires and rotting vegetation may lead to an increase in global warming.

Author: Gillian S.