Dominic MacDonell
The Amazon Rainforest is located in South America. Brazil is home to 60 percent of the rainforest, with Peru accounting for a further 13 percent. The remaining jungle spills out into parts of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guy-ana, Suriname and Venezuela.
The Amazon Rainforest is the largest rainforest in the world. According to the Mongabay website, the Amazon covers an area of approximately 3,179,715 square miles. It is hard to imagine something so big. To put that into perspective, the entire land area of the United States is 3,794,083 square miles, not much larger than the Amazon Rainforest.
The Amazon Rainforest takes its name from the river that flows through the jungle. The Amazon River is possibly the longest river in the world. However, researchers cannot agree about its true length. Depending upon the true source of the Amazon River, it could be either 4,345 miles long or 3,976 miles long. The Nile River in Africa is 4,130 miles long, so there is some stiff competition for the title of "World's Longest River."
The Amazon is home to more than 30 million people, says the WWF website. This includes members of indigenous tribes. These native inhabitants of the jungle were living in the Amazon long before European settlers arrived in South America. Incredibly, there are still tribes that remain unknown to the outside world. In February 2011, the BBC released video footage showing a newly discovered tribe living deep within the Amazon Rainforest.
The biological diversity of the Amazon is truly mind-boggling. According to the Blue Planet Biomes website, scientists be-lieve that the upper tree level, known as the canopy, may contain half of the world's species. This includes more than 500 mammals, 175 lizards and one-third of all the world's birds. If you don't like creepy-crawlies, the Amazon might not be the place for you. It is home to about 30 million different types of insects.
Spanning 6.7 million km2 (twice the size of India) the Ama-zon Biome is virtually unrivalled in scale, complexity and op-portunity, and truly is a region distinguished by superlatives. Not only does the Amazon encompass the single largest re-maining tropical rainforest in the world, it also houses at least 10% of the world’s known biodiversity, including en-demic and endangered flora and fauna, and its river ac-counts for 15-16% of the world’s total river discharge into the oceans. The Amazon River flows for more than 6,600 km, and with its hundreds of tributaries and streams con-tains the largest number of freshwater fish species in the world. Natural and cultural diversity Equally impressive are the unfathomable numbers of mam-mals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles4 found across the bi-ome. The Amazon is home to more than 30 million people living across a vast region subdivided into nine different na-tional political systems. According to the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA), about 9% (2.7 million) of the Amazon’s population is still made up of indigenous people – 350 different ethnic groups, more than 60 of which still re-main largely isolated. And yet, for all of its magnitude and apparent remoteness, the Amazon Biome is surprisingly fragile and close to each one of us. Jeopardizing a pillar of life on Earth During the last half century, the seemingly endless Amazon has lost at least 17% of its forest cover, its connectivity has been increasingly disrupted, and numerous endemic spe-cies have been subjected to waves of resource exploitation. The economic transformation of the Amazon based on the conversion and degradation of its natural habitat is gaining momentum. Yet, as those forces grow in strength, we are also finding that the Amazon plays a critical role in maintain-ing climate function regionally and globally, a contribution which everyone–rich or poor–depends on. The Amazon’s canopy cover helps regulate temperature and humidity, and is intricately linked to regional climate patterns through hydrological cycles that depend on the forests. Given the enormous amount of carbon stored in the forests of the Amazon, there is tremendous potential to alter global climate if not properly stewarded. The Amazon contains 90-140 billion metric tons of carbon, the release of even a por-tion of which would accelerate global warming significantly. Currently, land conversion and deforestation in the Amazon release up to 0.5 billion metric tons of carbon per year, not including emissions from forest fires, thus rendering the Amazon an important factor in regulating global climate
APPEARANCE Among the most distinctive of all birds, the toucan is a rain-forest icon. Toucans are marketing symbols for a breakfast cereal, hotels, travel and phone companies, and even a beer company. Its improbable beak or bill is its identifying characteristic, shared by the 40 or so species of toucans. The birds in this family (Ramphastidae) have huge, colorful bills and colorful plumage. The body is relatively robust and the toucan's wings are short and rounded. Thus, they do not fly well. The flight is undulating, with the bird rising with a few quick wing beats and descending on a short glide. A unique feature is their ability to fold back the tail onto the back. This enables them to roost in treeholes that would otherwise be too small to accommodate the bird and its huge beak.
