With so much in the news about rainforest deforestation and the nature of biased accounts, it helps to get to the bottom of the issue by examining the facts about our rainforests, their value to the world and the rate by which they are disappearing. Only by examining the facts can we understand where action must lie.

We are losing the rainforest at a greater rate than ever. Currently, 1.5 acres are being lost every second. Where rainforests once covered 14% of the earth’s landmass, they now cover just 6% and this figure is decreasing rapidly.

They are being destroyed because corporates wish to use timber, repurpose the land for agriculture and own land for private use. If this continues, nearly half of the world’s entire species of plants and animals will be lost. 50,000 species every year are already believed to be lost.

Many rainforests are cleared using fires, chainsaws and bulldozers, in order to take the timber. Then, the land is used for ranching and farming, by organisations which include Texaco and Mitsubishi. This impacts local people too: where there were once around ten million native Amazon indians believed to be living in the Amazon’s rainforest 500 years ago, there aren’t any more than 200,000 today. This means the destruction of thousands of years of knowledge about the rainforest’s natural medicines; the plants.

The Amazon rainforest covers a billion acres and if it were a country itself, it would be the world’s 9th biggest. It’s also been described as the Earth’s lungs, as it continually creates oxygen by recycling our carbon dioxide. So essentially, by destroying the rainforest, we will ultimately destroy ourselves.

These are just a small number of facts, but they are sobering. Explore our website to turn knowledge into action and find out what you can do to play a part in saving our vital and valuable rainforests for future generations.