dioxide taken up by forests Cutting the rain forests also releases the carbon stored in them speeding up climate change Until the mid 1900s Amazon deforestation was a side effect of subsistence farming Farmers cut trees to grow cattle and food crops for their families and communities Then big agriculture and industry moved in felling trees faster and faster Large cattle ranches soybean fields mines and towns replaced massive areas of forest Roads were built through the Amazon to make it easier to cut and remove trees By 2000 more than three fourths of Amazon deforestation was due to cattle ranching And Brazil's deforestation rate made it the world's third largest producer of greenhouse gases after the United States and China AMAZON'S INDIGENOUS TRIBES Approximately 400 to 500 indigenous tribes live deep within the Amazon rain forest An estimated 50 of them have no contact with the outside world The largest tribe the Yanomami a member of which is pictured has approximately 22 000 members The Akuntsu tribe had only five members in 2014 Tribes harvest rain forest foods and grow crops including bananas papayas corn beans and acai berries At least 180 languages are spoken among the tribes All tribes are threatened by deforestation war disease oil development and drug trafficking Some protected areas safeguard indigenous tribes from these threats But the Amazon provides much more than protection against global warming Tropical forests control world climate through the water cycle The trees release water into the atmosphere affecting local and regional climates as well as rainfall as far away as
Central America and the western United States The trees also suppress air pollution The Amazon is the RUBBER TAPPERS DEFEND THE planet's greatest source of biodiversity containing as RAIN FOREST Rubber tappers collect sap from rubber trees much as 30 percent of all species It provides foods This is the only source of natural rubber and medicines and products not only to local inhabitants tapping is a sustainable use Rubber tappers are also self described guardians of the forest but to the world Destroying the rain forest would These forest vigilantes take on criminal gangs mean the loss of these products now and in the future who seek out old valuable and protected trees such as mahogany Gang members mark the Its rivers are the area's main means of transportation trees and come back later to cut and remove them They export the trees mostly to the United and river fish provide much of the region's protein States Rubber tapper and forest guardian Elizeu Many of the Amazon's indigenous tribes depend on Berçacola says this is how illegal deforestation begins The gangs thin the forest decreasing all the rain forest has to offer They will be displaced as biodiversity and removing seed bearing trees the rain forest is cut The rubber tappers patrol the forest at great risk to themselves Sixteen were killed between 2005 and 2015 Bercacola has been shot at and his wife BRAZIL GETS SERIOUS ABOUT and children have left the state of Rondônia owing to threats DEFORESTATION By the 2000s Brazilians had begun to recognize the serious effects of deforestation When President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected in 2002 he and his minister of the environment Marina Silva formed the PPCDAm Plan for the Prevention and Combating of Deforestation in the Amazon This program expanded Amazon protections begun by the previous president It established protected areas including areas for indigenous peoples and enforced laws against illegal logging
SCIENCE TROPICAL CONNECTION FORESTS AND BIODIVERSITY Tropical rain forests cover approximately roots that can reach 15 feet 4 6 m Rain 6 percent of Earth's surface But they contain forest trees have very shallow roots because more than one half of the world's plant and most nutrients are near the surface The animal species They produce 40 percent of buttresses help support the tree and increase its oxygen All are located in a narrow band the area through which it can obtain nutrients of latitude on either side of the equator Here Tropical rain forests teem with life They the weather remains between approximately are the most biodiverse ecosystems on the 68 and 93 degrees Fahrenheit 20°C and 34°C planet A 2 5 acre 1 ha area of Amazon rain year round A tropical rain forest receives forest contains 100 000 insect species and between 50 and 260 inches 130 to 660 cm 456 tree species By contrast the United of rain per year Most receive more than Kingdom has only 30 native tree species The 100 inches 250 cm per year Amazon as a whole has 40 000 species of Approximately 70 percent of rain forest plants 30 000 of them found only there 14 plants are trees Rain forests have more kinds The Amazon contains 54 percent of the total of trees than any other ecosystem The trees amount of rain forest left on Earth But owing have straight trunks that grow up to 100 feet to deforestation rain forest biodiversity is 30 m or more before branching At the base declining around the world the trunks spread out to form broad buttress
E N W S Tropical rain forests shown in green cover some areas of the globe near the equator
