Though what we do may seem crazy, here is why we do it...
1. Rainforests cover 2% of the Earth's surface, or 6% of its land mass, yet they house half the plant and animal species on Earth. They originally covered at least twice that area.
2. 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.
3. Many of the foods we eat today owe their existence to the rainforests: avocado, bananna, black pepper, Brazilian nuts, cayenne pepper, cassava/manioc, cashews, chocolate/cocoa, cinnamon, clovs, coconut, coffe, cola, corn/maize, eggplant, fig, ginger, guava, herbal tea, vanilla. The list goes on and on!
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.
4. 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. Drigs used to treay 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.
5. 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!
We must do something NOW! to stop this.
Please help us.
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