Rainforests at Risk

Having walked through the rainforests of Brazil and traveled down and swam in the Amazon… I always feel a deep sadness in my heart when I read about the destruction happening with our rainforests around the world. Read on…

 

Threats to the World's Rainforests

Rainforests are among the most important and yet threatened ecosystems on the planet.

Today, more than half of Earth's original rainforests have all been destroyed, victims of unsustainable agriculture, ranching, logging, mining and other destructive practices. These stresses have increased enormously in the last 50 years alone.

Every year, 50 million acres — an area the size of England, Wales and Scotland combined — are cut down. Primary rainforests in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Haiti have been lost entirely, with the Ivory Coast fast approaching the same fate.

Every second of every day, a slice of rainforest the size of a football field is mowed down. That’s 86,400 football fields of rainforest per day, or over 31 million football fields of rainforest lost each year.

In places where The Nature Conservancy works, the threat to rainforests is all too clear.

Threats to Rainforests:

• Threat: Less than seven percent remains of Brazil's Atlantic Forest which once covered 330 million acres. Expanding urban areas, increased agricultural and industrial development threaten this rich, fragile forest and in so doing threaten the well-being of the surrounding communities that rely on the forest for their economic prosperity and livelihoods.
• Threat: Along the green, rolling hills of Chile's Valdivian Coastal Range, highway construction, overharvesting native trees for firewood and unsustainable logging threaten to tear this unique forest apart. With the loss of the forest — the former home of the indigenous Mapuche people — Chile will lose an important part of its cultural heritage.
• Threat: Deep within the mist-shrouded trees and sparkling waters of Indonesia's East Kalimantan forests, unsustainable and illegal logging destroy the precious forest ecosystem and disrupt the lives of the surrounding local people.
• Threat: In South America's Amazon Rainforest, ranchers are turning forests into pastures and roads are slicing through dense tropical trees. This deforestation destroys the tremendous biological diversity just waiting to be discovered as well as the valuable resources we rely on from the Amazon like important medicines that treat cancer patients.

***To read the original article or more information about rainforests, go to http://www.nature.org/rainforests/explore/threats.html***