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Amazon Rainforest
The Amazon rainforest is the largest rainforest in the world. It's size is that of the collecting basin of the Amazon river, which is by far the largest river on earth. It encompasses about 7 million square kilometer, 1.7 billion acres, that equals about 1 billion football fields or the size of the entire United States east of the Mississippi.
It is more than half the size of all rainforests combined together and therefore contains more animal and plant spieces than any other part of the world. About 60% of the Amazon rainforest are within Brazil, which is about half of the country's size.
The Amazon rainforest is more spiecies-rich than any other wet forests, i.e. the tropical forests in Africa or Asia. One out of ten spiecies live in the Amazon Rainforest. There are millions of insects, thousands of plants-spiecies, about two-thousand birds, about three-thousand fish-spiecies that are known and were recorded up until today. But it is estimated that there are still hundreds of thousands of plant spiecies remaining to be discovered. Nowhere else in the world can such a dense diversity of plants and animals be found.
The Amazon rainforest is the worlds jewel. It is unique, sensitive and irreparable. It is an ecosystem that took millions of years to develop. It is vital to earth's existence. Unfortunatly about 20'000 square kilometers of amazon rainforest territory are lost per year, due to deforestation. And whatever parts of it are destroyed will never be brought back... It is therefore essential that we take action.