!!Amazon Logging Rights Sold to Canada and China!! Natives protest with artwork

I am an author/Amazon explorer and I travel to the Amazon rainforest about every eight weeks. While in the jungle I learned that the government has sold logging rights to Canada and China. Currently we lose 1 ½ Acres of rainforest every second.

While talking to the natives about this disturbing news they decided to prove that the rainforest is more profitable standing, preserved, and pristine than it is clear-cut and destroyed.

By creating artwork from renewable resources they have provided an micro-enterprise opportunity for themselves. They are preserving their culture as well as proving to the government preservation is more profitable. Please visit this website www.AmazonArtists.com to see some of their Amazing work, one native hand carved an Amazon themed guitar body , it is out of this world!!! , and they ever hand weave beautiful bracelets to symbolize their cause.

Please pass this note off to your friends.

its AmazonArtists.com

 

A Buzz in the Forest
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The beauty, majesty and timelessness of a tropical rainforest are indescribable. It is impossible to capture on film, to describe in words or to explain to those who have never had the awe-inspiring experience of standing in the heart of a tropical rainforest. Rainforests have evolved over millions of years into the incredibly rich complex environments they are today. Sadly, it has taken only a century of man’s intervention to destroy what nature has so intricately designed to last forever. Unbelievably, over 200,000 acres of rainforest are slashed and burned every day (Taylor). By the time you have finished reading this sentence, more then two acres of rainforest will be annihilated (Colchester). In less than fifty years, more than half of the world’s tropical rainforests have fallen victim to fire and the chain saw. If deforestation continues at this current rate, scientists believe that nearly eighty-to-ninety percent of all tropical rainforest ecosystems will be destroyed by the year 2020 (Taylor). Tropical deforestation is reducing biodiversity, depleting indigenous people’s habitat, and impairing the Earth’s biosphere.

Biodiversity loss is intimately connected with deforestation, in the world’s tropical rainforests. The ruin of tropical rainforests has a profound and devastating world impact because of their biological diversity (Taylor). Habitat destruction is by far the leading mechanism of extinction, and experts estimate that one half of all species living today exist solely in tropical forests (Shapiro). Dr. Fredrick C. Hymen of Oxford University says, "The rainforests are quite simply, the richest, oldest, most productive and complex ecosystems on Earth" (qtd. in Forsythe). Studies suggest that the great diversity of species are directly related to the apparently dynamic and unstable nature of rainforests over geologic time (Robinson). It is estimated that the rainforests contain over thirty percent of all higher plant species, as well as twenty percent of all bird life and fifteen percent of all mammals found on earth today (Beckham). This intricate web of biodiversity is being sundered, and species are being lost before we are even able to discover them (Vanderneer). Dr. Stuart Primm, a professor at the University of Tennessee who specializes in endangered species says, "When a species is driven to extinction, ‘that’s it,’ the potential of that species use for mankind’s benefit is lost forever" (qtd. in Stevens). Harvard biologist, Dr. Edward O. Wilson states that "ten to twenty percent of all species in the rainforest may become extinct in the next thirty years. This rate is equivalent to a loss of three species per hour" (qtd. in Shapiro). This unwarranted mass destruction is the main force driving a species extinction rate unmatched in over sixty-five million years (Taylor). The time for the loss in diversity to be restored by natural species formation after a period of mass extinction is five to ten billion years (Chan).

The ancient homes of the rainforests indigenous peoples are being decimated. Throughout the tropics, forest-dwelling peoples whose age-old traditions allow them to live harmoniously with the forest are losing out to cattle ranching, logging, hydroelectric projects, large-scale farms, mining, and colonization schemes (Taylor). But when rainforests vanish, so do the indigenous peoples, this is one of the least recognized facts about rainforest destruction (Taylor). Tragically, most of the native societies of the rainforest have already been destroyed. In Brazil alone, 87 tribes were wiped out in the first half of this century (Robinson). Their lands have been taken, their basic rights disregarded, and often even their very existence has been ignored (McIntire). When these indigenous peoples are destroyed, gone too is their empirical wisdom, representing centuries of accumulated knowledge of the medicinal value of rainforest plant and animal species. Robert Goodland of the World Bank wrote, "Indigenous lore is essential for the use, identification and cataloguing of the tropical biota. The preservation of these groups is a significant economic opportunity for the developing nation, not a luxury" (qtd in Taylor). He also states that, "each time a rainforest medicine man dies, it is as if a library has burned down" (qtd in Taylor). Britain’s Prince Charles voiced, "Many tribes are being driven to extinction by measles, venereal disease and mercury poisoning following the unlawful incursion of their lands by the dreadful pattern of collective genocide" (qtd. in Clay). Strategies for the use and conservation of tropical forests must first and foremost respect the rights of the traditional populace of these areas. (Aster).

The ruination of wild naturally evolving rainforests are causing extensive damage to the world’s biosphere. Rainforests stabilize the Earth’s climate, protect watersheds, and maintain soil productivity. They also help prevent drought, flooding, soil erosion and stream sedimentation by keeping the hydraulic cycle in check. Rainforests maintain the flow of streams and rivers by absorbing rainfall and releasing moisture into the atmosphere (Regenstein). As biologist Dr. Norman Myers of the University of Minnesota notes, "Rainforests are the finest celebration of nature ever known on the planet, they prevent global warming and generate approximately twenty percent of the oxygen for our Earth. Never before has nature’s greatest orchestration been so threatened" (qtd. in Forsythe). Rainforests have been described as the lungs of our planet, by providing the essential environmental world service of continuously recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen (Taylor).

The slash and burn techniques used in our tropical rainforests are causing irrevocable wreckage to their biodiversity, plant and animal habitat and also to the Earth’s biosphere.
The rainforest is one of the most exotic and vibrant places on earth. This mysterious land has created a primal yearning in men for decades. The variable life forms found within the rainforest cannot speak for themselves in our government chambers, corporate offices or environmental boardrooms. It is our responsibility to speak on their behalf as best we can. We cannot ask for too much, and we had better not ask too little. Everyone must aggressively do his or her part. If we do not, we must demand what is needed to support all life on Earth. Never doubt that a group of thoughtful citizens can change the world; in fact, it is the only thing that ever has (Hayes).

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Works Cited​

Aster, Jason, and Stacie Wallace. "Tropical Rainforest Biome." GSGIS 30 Aug. 1998. 14 Nov. 1998 < http://www.gsgis.k12.va.us/gsgis/depts/rnforest.htm> .

Beckham, Eugene C. "Amazon Basin." Environmental Encyclopedia. Ed. William P. Cunningham. Detroit: Gale, 1994: 32-33.

Chan, Jennifer. "Threats and Solutions." Biology Independent Study Project. 14 Nov. 1998 < http://www.interlog.com/~excells/rforest/ts.html> .

Clay, Jason W. "Lessons of the Rainforest." Rainforest Information Center. 19 Sept. 1998. 24 Nov. 1998 < http://forests.lic.wisc.edu/ric/edsups/peoples.htm> .

Colchester, Marcus B. "Deforestation of the Rainforests." Rainforest Information Center. 25 Jan. 1998. 24 Nov. 1998

< http://forests.lic.wisc.edu/ric/edsups/causes.htm> .

Forsythe, Ruben F. "Rates of Rainforest Loss." Rain Forest Action Network. 14 Nov. 1998 < http://www.ran.org/ran. > .

Hayes, Randy. "500 Year Plan." Rain Forest Action Network. 12 Nov. 1998

< http://www.ran.org/ran/> .

McIntire, Chris. "Amazon Rain Forest." Integrative Studies in Biology. 14 Nov. 1998

< http://pilot.msu.edu/user/golebie1/isb202/amazon.htm> .

Regenstein, Lewis G. "Rain Forest." Environmental Encyclopedia. Ed. William P. Cunninghan. Detroit: 1994 679-682.

Robinson, William C. "Rain Forest." Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia Online. 1998. Grolier Interactive. 12 N0v. 1998 < http://go.grolier.com/> .

Shapiro, Roger L. "Tropical Deforestation is a Health Threat." PRS Quarterly Sept. 1993. Rpt. in Rainforest. Ed. Charles P. Cozic. At Issue. San Diego: Greenhaven, 1998. 46-62.

Stevens, William K. "Lush Life: What Will We Lose as More Species Vanish?" New York Times. 2 June 1998: special section. 14 Nov. 1998 < http://nytimes.com> .

Taylor, Leslie. "The Destruction of the Majestic Rainforest." The Rainforest Solution 5 Jan. 1998. 14 Nov. 1998 < http://www.cwpost.livnot.edu/> .

Vanderneer, John, and Ivette Perfecto. "Multiple Factors Cause Rainforest Loss."

Institute for Food and Development Policy Backgrounder Summer 1995. Rpt. in

Rainforest. Ed Charles P Cozic. At Issue. San Diego: Greenhaven, 1998. 9-22.

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Can the rainforests truly be saved? How? Why are people not listening? What is the next step in education, negotiation, activism? What will it take for the major logging companies not to pursue logging in rainforests?

 

Yay.
Amazon sounds amazing. Im happy for you that you choosed yer life like this
Welcome, and good luck to you
PS! Handicraft rocks

 

Thank you Dudley DR. You said it all about the rainforest. Here in Auztralia they like to promote to tourist the rainforest but they still destroy what little is left.

 

I try to live here taking as little as I can. That being said, good luck trying to save anything others are bent on destroying.