The
Amazon rainforest is the largest on Earth, covering around 40 percent
of the South American continent there are parts of this monumental
broadleaf forest in nine different countries which are Brazil, Bolivia,
Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana.
More than half of the Amazon rainforest (in fact 60 percent of it), is
found spread across Brazil.
Covering most of the Amazon Basin
throughout South America, the Amazon rainforest makes up half of the
world's remaining rainforests and is home to the largest and most
biodiverse tract of tropical rainforest on the planet. There are
estimated to be 16,000 different species of tree alone growing
throughout its 5,500,000 square kilometres (2,100,000 sq miles)
territory.
Here are a few interesting facts about the Amazon rainforest that you may not already know:
- Two billion tonnes of carbon dioxide is absorbed by the Amazon rainforest every year.
- There are around 2.5 million insect species found in the Amazon rainforest.
- 2,200 fish species, 1,294 birds, 427 mammals, 428 amphibians, and 378 reptiles have been discovered in the Amazon rainforest.
- More than 2,000 tropical forest plants have been found to have anti-cancer properties.
- The
Amazon basin holds 20 percent of the world's fresh water, and the same
percentage of the world's oxygen is produced by the Amazon rainforest.
- More
than 1.4 million hectares of the Amazon rainforest have been cleared
since the 1970s and an even larger area has been affected by logging and
forest fires.
- One in five of all of world's bird species and
one in five of the fish species are found in the Amazon rainforest and
the Amazon River.
- The Amazon rainforest is home to 2.7 million
indigenous people that are split into 350 different ethnic groups (60 of
which are very isolated).
- Between 1999 and 2009, 1,200 species of plants and animals were identified for the first time in the Amazon rainforest.
- Deforestation rates have been reducing drastically since 2004 as increasing areas of conserved land are created.