Working together, we can leave our children a living planet.






Tropical rainforests are the Earth's oldest living ecosystems. Fossil records show that the forests of Southeast Asia have existed in more or less their present form for 70 to 100 million years. (Myers, Norman, The Primary Source)

Rainforests are being destroyed at a staggering rate. According to the National Academy of Science, at least 50 million acres a year are lost, an area the size of England, Wales and Scotland combined.

All the primary rainforests in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Haiti have been destroyed already. The Ivory Coast rainforests have been almost completely logged. The Philippines lost 55% of its forest between 1960 and 1985; Thailand lost 45% of its forest between 1961 and 1985.

Despite the small land area they cover, rainforests are home to about half of the 5 to 10 million plant and animal species on the globe. Rainforests also support 90,000 of the 250,000 identified plant species. Scientists estimate that there are at least 30,000 as yet undiscovered plants, most of which are rainforest species. (Myers, Norman, The Primary Source)

One fourth of the medicines available today owe their existence to plants. Seventy percent of the plants identified by the National Cancer Institute as useful in cancer treatment are found only in the rainforest. Drugs used to treat leukemia, Hodgkin's disease and other cancers come from rainforest plants, as do medicines for heart ailments, hypertension, arthritis and birth control. Yet fewer than 1% of tropical forest species have been thoroughly examined for their chemical compounds. (Myers, Norman, The Primary Source)

Many of the foods we eat today originated in rainforests: avocado, banana, black pepper, Brazilian nuts, cayenne pepper, cassava/manioc, cashews, chocolate/cocoa, cinnamon, cloves, coconut, coffee, cola, corn/maize, eggplant, fig, ginger, guava, herbal tea ingredients (hibiscus flowers, orange flowers and peel, lemon grass), jalapeņo, lemon, orange, papaya, paprika, peanut, pineapple, rice, winter squash, sweet pepper, sugar, tomato, turmeric, vanilla, and Mexican yam. The wild strains still in the rainforests of many of these plants provide genetic materials essential to fortify our existing agricultural stock. Many other rainforest plants have great promise to become other staple foods. (Caufield, Catherine, In the Rainforest)

While it's true that rainforests produce vast amounts of oxygen through photosynthesis, they consume as much as they produce in the decay of organic matter. Rainforests do affect our atmosphere and climate, but not through supplying the world's oxygen. (Caufield, Catherine, In the Rainforest)

Rainforests play a critical role in the atmosphere in part because they hold vast reserves of carbon in their vegetation. When rainforests are burned, or the trees are cut and left to decay, the carbon is released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2). This is the second largest factor contributing to the greenhouse effect. (Caufield, Catherine, In the Rainforest)

Four-fifths of the nutrients in the rainforests are in the vegetation. This means that the soils are nutrient-poor and become eroded and unproductive within a few years after the rainforest is cleared.

A typical four square mile patch of rainforest contains as many as 1500 species of flowering plants, 750 species of trees, 125 mammal species, 400 species of birds, 100 of reptiles, 60 of amphibians, and 150 different species of butterflies. In one study, one square meter of leaf litter, when analyzed, turned up 50 species of ants alone. (National Academy of Sciences.)

The tropics are the earth's richest natural reserves. One fifth of all the birds and plants on Earth evolved in the Amazon Basin. (Steinhart, Peter, National Wildlife Federation, Dec./Jan. 1984)



Every person makes an impact on the world, and the results are probably bigger than most people ever imagine. You influence your friends, and they influence their friends, and so on until, before you know it, the world has changed. That's good and bad.

The Bad news: Living in the industrialized world means you are constantly producing waste that is not readily recycled by the Earth's ecosystem. In fact, recent studies indicate that on average each person in the U.S. is responsible for over 1 million pounds of waste creation each year!

Remember, that can of soda didn't come from thin air. It was produced by a combination of industries that mined the bauxite used to create the aluminum used to create the can and those factories were powered by burning fuel, and then the cans were transported by boats and trains, etc. So, the cost to the environment goes far beyond the $.75 you spent on the soda!


Rape of forests threatens to wipe out orang-utans
Source: The Guardian
Publication date: 2000-03-23

Orang-utans will be extinct in the wild in five to 10 years if rain forest destruction continues at its present level, according to a report on the large hairy orange primate. This is more than 10 times quicker than the prediction in a survey by the World Wide Fund for Nature 18 months ago, and has prompted environmentalists to lobby for the animal's immediate classification as critically endangered.

The data was collated by Carel van Schaik of Duke University in North Carolina along with Kathryn Monk and Yarrow Robertson, who are in charge of the Leuser ecosystem management project in the north of Sumatra.

It shows that the population of orang-utans (Malay for `people of the forest') has declined by about 1,000 a year in Sumatra since 1998, due to accelerated habitat loss caused by logging and forest conversion. They estimate the orang-utan population on the island is now no more than 5,500.

`We did not realise before that their habitat was under such threat from logging and conversion to oil palm,' Ms Monk said. `The highest densities are found in lowland swamps and these are disappearing, as fast as the forests.'

Population figures for Borneo, the only other area where orang- utans live in the wild, are harder to calculate because much of the island is impenetrable. Scientists believe the death rate is probably higher than in Sumatra, because Borneo was worse affected by forest fires in 1997 and 1998.

At least 350 young orang-utans have been taken to rehabilitation centres in Borneo in the last 18 months, according to Ashley Leiman, director of the Orang-utan Foundation in London. `For every one that is brought in there are probably at least another six that have been killed,' she said.

Ms Leiman said there were about 8,000-12,000 orang-utans left in the wild in Borneo. Scientists estimate that the orang-utan population has almost halved since 1993.

The problem was the Indonesian government's `policy, or lack of it, on forest conversion', Ms Monk said. `All of Sumatra and the southern two-thirds of Borneo [called Kalimantan] are in Indonesia.'

Not only is illegal logging and illegal conversion to oil palm plantations uncontrolled in areas of Indonesia and Kalimantan, corruption is so rife that companies are acquiring permits to clear areas that are meant to remain untouched.

Ms Monk said: `Nowhere is fully protected any more because national parks are being logged as well.'

She said the situation in Malaysia was not as critical because there was little illegal logging in protected areas. `But forest outside these areas is being cleared as quickly as in Indonesia.'

The orang-utan's slow rate of reproduction has contributed to the problem. Orang-utans rarely reproduce before they are 12 years old, and then have babies on average only once every eight years. They also need a large area to live in.

International donors were on the verge this year of threatening to suspend aid unless the Jakarta government reined in the illegal loggers. Steps have been taken in recent weeks, but experts say there has been little meaningful change, mainly because the army and police are involved in the illegal trade.

Environmentalists in Britain are so alarmed by what is happening that they are writing to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature to demand that the orang-utan's official classification be changed from vulnerable to critically endangered.



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