PeruGloria enhiesta en milenios de historia…

Every second one, a chunk of rainforest the size of a football field is being destroyed, while we take care of 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, the landowners and global companies seeking to extract its wealth. Rainforests once covered 14% of the land on the planet, and now only cover only 6%. It is estimated that at least 40 years of the last remaining rainforests could disappear forever. Almost half of the world's species of plants and animals that live in the forest may soon disappear altogether as a result of deforestation of tropical rainforest. We are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every day due to rainforest deforestation is equivalent to only 50,000 species per year and rising. Many possible cures for life threatening diseases can never now encounter from the extinction of many rainforest species. Today, 121 drugs sold worldwide come from plant sources. Less than 1% these trees and tropical plants have been proved by scientists, whereas over 25% of all Western pharmaceuticals are made from the variety of plants. It is estimated that more than 90 indigenous tribes have been destroyed by settlers since 1900, only in Brazil, and with them have gone centuries of accumulated knowledge on the medicinal value of the forest species, and all wisdom. Today there are fewer than 200,000 Indians living in the Amazon rainforest where five centuries ago there were an estimated ten million dollars. The world loses thousands of years of irreplaceable knowledge about medicinal plants as a medicine man dies, and could not transmit their wisdom to the next generation.

The forests are so biologically diverse that loss of them will have a devastating impact worldwide. The destruction of tropical rainforest jungle and species habitat is suitable to be the only thing that our children will never forgive us.

More facts:

There are more varieties of fish in a single pond in Brazil that all rivers in Europe combined. The total tree diversity in North America is about 700 varieties. The same amount is in a single plot of 25 acres in Borneo. More species of birds are found in a single Peruvian rainforest reserve in the United States. Forty-three different species of ants were found in just one tree in Peru. The number of different fish species throughout the Atlantic Ocean beyond the number of fish species in the Amazon River.

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 half the world's wildlife. Hundreds and thousands of these rainforest species become extinct before they have even been identified, much less identified and studied.

We must stop the destruction of forest. These facts about the forest are crucial. It is vital that we learn all we can before the rain forests of mankind that an irreversible error. It is estimated that ninety percent of all tropical rainforest ecosystems will be destroyed by 2020 if deforestation continues at current rates. No longer.

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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