Rainforest facts

The good news:

• The Amazon Rainforest covers over a billion acres and if it was a country, it would be the ninth largest in the world
• More than 20 percent of the world oxygen is produced by the Amazon
• More than half of the world's estimated 10 million species of plants, animals and insects live in rainforests
• Around 20% of the world's fresh water is in the Amazon Basin
• One hectare (2.47 acres) may contain over 750 types of trees
• 80% of the developed world's common foodstuffs originated in tropical rainforest
• 3000 fruits are found in rainforests but only 200 are now in use in the West (indigenous Indians use over 2,000)

The not so good news:

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

• Rainforests are being destroyed because the value of rainforest land is perceived as only the value of its timber
• Nearly half of the world's species of plants, animals and microorganisms in severe danger over the next 25 years because of deforestation
• We are losing more than 100 plant, animal and insect species every day due to deforestation (over 50,000 species a year).
• As the rainforest species disappear, so do many undiscovered cures for life-threatening diseases (25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients)
• Of the estimated ten million Indians living in the Amazonian Rainforest when the Americas were discovered by Europeans; just 500 years or so later there are less than half a million
• In Brazil, European colonists destroyed over 90 indigenous tribes in the last 112 years
• Most medicine men and shamans remaining in the Rainforests today are 70 years old or more (as each one dies, the tribe and the world loses thousands of years of ancestral knowledge about plants and natural medicines

Source: Raintree Nurition

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