Amazon Rainforest

• The Amazon Rainforest is one of the world's greatest natural resource.  It is a diverse natural phenomenon.
• The Amazon spreads across much of South America; Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil and Venezuela.

The river

• The Amazon River is an important element of the Amazon Rainforest.  The river is the heart of the Amazon providing it with water.
• The source of the Amazon River is traced to the Andes Mountains in South America, where the snow melts and the water flows into the river. The river then travels through the entire northern half South America.
• The river is located in a warm, tropical zone where on the average over 400 in or 1015 cm of rain fall every year.  That is equal to more than an inch (3 cm) of rain every day.
• It is one of the longest rivers in the world.  It is approximately 6,450km or 3,999 mi long.
• At its widest point the Amazon can measure 11 km or 6.8 mi wide during the dry season.
• The river can measure up to 40 km or 24.8 mi wide in the rainy season and when there is a flood.
• The Amazon basin is one of the most diverse habitats in the entire world. In the Amazon, you will find large rivers, jungles, and a vast variety of plants and animals.
• It is the host to a wide variety of plants, including: Annatto, banana, breadfruit, cashew, coca, heliconias, kapok tree, mahogany, philodendrons, rubber, vanilla, and many other medicinal plants.

Conservation

• The Amazon rainforest is being destroyed, as many other rainforests around the world, because it yields profits.  The main causes of rainforest destruction are timber harvesting, cattle raising and farming.
• A feasible economic alternative to cutting the rainforests exists. Medicinal plants, fruits, oils, and other resources such as rubber, chocolate and chicle can be harvested.
• Sustainable development may be another answer. This involves harvesting products from the environment that do not damage the surrounding ecosystem, and shunning away from timber forest products.
• Communities that live in the Amazon can harvest such products and earn five to ten times more money than they do when they chop down the forest for other crops.
• Indigenous people have lived in the Amazon for thousands of years.  For much of this time, the indigenous people fished, hunted and grew crops is small gardens.  Their type of life style is called subsistence because they grow and hunt only what they need to subsist or survive.
• One of the practices used by the indigenous people is slash and burn.  The slash and burn practice is not necessarily bad for the environment.  When done properly, this is a viable way of farming.  Farmers clear out a portion of the land to release the nutrients in the soil and grow crops for a few years on that plot.  The people then clear another plot of land and let the original plot of land re-grow.  They will go back and forth to and from these plots of land to grow crops for only a few years.
• The problem of slash and burn arises when too many people live in and from the land.  The rainforest is then cut down in bigger and more numerous sections, which means that the indigenous people don’t have as much land to rotate their crops on.
• Most of the world is aware that the rainforest is under threat.
• We mentioned above that population growth is one factor that is threatening the rainforest.  Other factors include fire hazards, poverty, greed, short-term planning, etc. The Amazon basin is slowly becoming dryer and is now susceptible to fire.
• Success in conservation has been made.  National parks have been created, the environment is discussed in government meetings, and ecotourism is growing.
• Ecotourism attempts to build environmental awareness, provides a positive experience for visitors and hosts, provides financial benefits to both the local people and for conservation.
• Sustainable development has received a lot of attention since the Rio '92 conference on the environment. For the rainforests this primarily entails the development of non-timber forest products that can be harvested without damaging the surrounding ecosystem. These efforts most often target indigenous and local communities and market the products in local and regional markets, although some headway has been made in the international markets. In this way, natural areas do not have to be "lost" to the market economies of the nations that contain them, but their exploitation can be managed to sustainable levels.