Rainforests circle the globe for twenty degrees of latitude on both sides of the equator. In that relatively narrow band of the planet, more than half of all the species of plants and annimals in the world make their home. Reveral hundred different varieties of trees may grow in a single acre, and just one of those trees may be the habitat for more than ten thousand kinds of spiders, ants, and other insects. More species of amphibians, birds, insects, mammals, and reptiles live in rainforests than anywhere else on earth.
Unfortunately, half of the world's rainforest have already been destroyed, and at the current rate, another 25 percent will be lost by the year 2000. Scientist estimate that as many as fifty million acre are destroyed annually. In other word, every sixty seconds, one hundred acres of rainforest is being cleared. By the time your finish reading this passage , two hundred acres will have been destroyed! When this happens, constant rain erode the former forest floor, the thin layer of soil no longer supports plant life, and the ecology of the region is altered forever. Thousands of species of plant and annimals are condemned to extinction and, since we are not able to predict the ramifications of this loss to a delicate global ecology, we do not know what we may be doing to the future of the human species as well.