Important Facts You Should Know About the Tropical Rainforests

Tropical rainforests are located near the equator concentrated in Africa, Australia, Asia, and Central and South America. With the year-long steady temperatures due to the location on the planet and its 160 to 400 inches of rain per year, plant life is denser in the rainforests than anywhere else in the world. The Amazon Rainforest alone produces more than 20% of the world's oxygen from all its vegetation and is sometimes referred to as the "Lungs of our Planet." Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth, but thanks to major logging companies, land owners, and short-sighted governments, they now cover only 6% of the planet and experts have estimated that they could vanish altogether in the next 40 years at the rate we are going.

Below are some interesting facts about the rainforests and reasons why we should try to protect our rainforests from those destroying them. The lives of our children's children may depend on our actions today in regards to the rainforest. After reading a few of the facts listed below, it is easy to understand how.

There was once more than ten million Indians living in the Amazon Rainforest. Today there are less than 200,000. As more and more natives from the rainforests die and their numbers continue to decrease, more untapped knowledge of the benefits and uses of the resources our rainforests offer to us are forever lost.

There are an estimated 10 million species of plants, animals, and insects that live in the tropical rainforests. That's more than half of those from the entire planet. Experts estimate that we are losing 50,000 plant, animal, and insect species every year due to rainforest deforestation for its timber value.

The Amazon Basin contains one-fifth of the world's fresh water supply.

There are at least 3,000 fruits found in the rainforests. Only 200 of these fruits are used in the Western World while the Indians of the rainforests use more than 2,000 of them. At least 80% of the developed world's diet originated in the tropical rainforests. Some of the fruits originally coming from the rainforests include, avocados, coconuts, figs, oranges, lemons, grapefruit, bananas, guavas, pineapples, mangos, and tomatoes. Likewise, some of the vegetables include corn, potatoes, rice, winter squash, and yams. Spices such as black pepper, cayenne, chocolate, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and sugar cane also originated in the rainforests as well as coffee, vanilla, Brazil nuts and cashews.

3000 plants have been identified by The U.S. National Cancer Institute that can be actively used against cancer cells. 70% of these plants are found in the rainforest. More than 120 prescription drugs sold worldwide come from plant derived sources. 25% of those ingredients come from the rainforests and yet only 1% of the tropical trees and plants of the rainforests have been tested by scientists.

Clearing and burning rainforests releases vast amounts of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, ozone and nitrous oxide into the atmosphere. Each year, deforestation contributes 23-30 percent of all carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is believed to be responsible for approximately half of global warming. Scientists have only just begun to tap into the unending daily and medicinal usages of the plant life in the rainforests. To discover even a small percentage of what they have to offer the rest of the world will take centuries. But at the rate we are going, we only have a few decades before it will all vanish and all that untapped knowledge is lost forever.