In this paper, I will explain the great importance of the tropical Rainforests around the world and discuss the effects of the tragedy of rainforest destruction and the effect that it is having on the earth. I will talk about the efforts being made to help curb the rate of rainforest destruction and the peoples of the rainforest, and I will explore a new topic in the fight to save the rainforest, habitat fragmentation. Another topic being discussed is the many different types of rainforest species and their uniqueness from the rest of the world.
First, I will discuss the many species of rare and exotic animals, Native to the Rainforest. Tropical Rainforests are home to many of the strangest looking and most beautiful, largest and smallest, most dangerous and least frightening, loudest and quietest animals on earth. There are many types of animals that make their homes in the rainforest some of them include: jaguars, toucans, parrots, gorillas, and tarantulas. There are so many fascinating animals in tropical rainforest that millions have not even identified yet. In fact, about half of the world’s species have not even been identified yet.
But sadly, an average of 35 species of rainforest animals are becoming extinct every day. So many species of animals live in the rainforest than any other parts of the world because rainforests are believed to be the oldest ecosystem on earth. Some forests in southeast Asia have been around for at least 100 million years, ever since the dinosaurs have roamed the earth. During the ice ages, the last of which occurred about 10,000 years ago, the frozen areas of the North and South Poles spread over much of the earth, causing huge numbers of extinctions. But the giant freeze did not reach many tropical rainforests.
Therefore, these plants and animals could continue to evolve, developing into the most iverse and complex ecosystems on earth. The nearly perfect conditions for life also help contribute to the great number of species. With temperatures constant at about 75-80 degrees Fahrenheit the whole year, the animals don’t have to worry about freezing during the cold winters or finding hot shade in the summers. They rarely have to search for water, as rain falls almost every day in tropical rainforests. Some rainforest species have populations that number in the millions. Other species consist of only a few dozen individuals.
Living in limited areas, most of these species are found nowhere else on earth. In a rainforest, it is difficult to see many things other than the millions of insects creeping and crawling around in every layer of the forest. Scientists estimate that there are more than 50 million different species of invertebrates living in rainforests. A biologist researching the rainforest found 50 different of ants on a single tree in Peru! A few hours of poking around in a rainforest would produce several insects unknown to science. The constant search for food , water, sunlight and space is a 24-hour pushing and shoving match.
With this fierce competition, it is amazing that that so many species of animals can ll live together. But this is actually the cause of the huge number of the different species. . Many animal species have developed relationships with each other that benefit both species. Birds and mammal species love to eat the tasty fruits provided by trees. Even fish living in the Amazon River rely on the fruits dropped from forest trees. In turn, the fruit trees depend upon these animals to eat their fruit, which helps them to spread their seeds to far – off parts of the forest. Unfortunately, humans will not be able to save each species in this same way.
Each species has evolved with its own set of unique adaptations, ways of elping them to survive. Every animal has the ability to protect itself from being someone’s next meal. To prevent the extinction of a species each and every species must develop a defense tactic. The following are just a few of Mother Nature’s tricks. The coloring of some animals acts as protection from their predators. Insects play some of the best hide-and-go-seek in the forest. The “walking stick” is one such insect; it blends in so well with the palm tree it calls its home that no one would notice unless it’s moved.
Some butterflies, when they close their wings, look xactly like leaves. Camouflage also works in reverse, helping predators, such as boa constrictors, sneak up on unsuspecting animals and surprise them. The tree-toed sloth is born with brown fur, but you would never know this by looking at it. The green algae that makes its home in the sloths fur helps it to blend in with the tops of the trees, the canopy, where it makes it’s home. But even green algae isn’t the only thing living in a sloth’s fur; it is literally “bugged” with a variety of insects. 978 beetles were once found living on one sloth.
The sloth has other clever adaptations. Famous for its snail-like pace; it is one of the slowest moving animals on earth. It is so slow that it often takes up to a month to digest it’s food. Although its tasty meat would make a good meal for jaguars and other predators, most do not notice the sloth as it hangs in the trees, high up in the canopy. Other animals don’t want to announce their presence to the whole forest. Armed with dangerous poisons used in life threatening situations, their bright colors warn predators to stay away. This enables them to survive everyday emergency situations.
The coral snake of the Amazon, with its brilliant red, yellow, and lack coloring, is recognized as one of the most beautiful snakes in the world, but it is just as deadly as it is beautiful. The coral snake’s deadly poison can kill in seconds. Other animals know to stay away from it. The poison arrow frog also stands out with its brightly colored skin. It’s skin produces some of the strongest natural poison in the world, which indigenous people often use for hunting purposes. It’s poison is now being tested for use in modern medicine. In a single raiforest habitat, several species of squirels can live together without harming one another.
This bewilders many people, Louise Emmons found. Why an nine species of squirrels live together? Well, in a brief summary each of the nine species is a different size; three have specialized diets or habitats, which leaves six species that feed on nuts, fruits and insects, and so potentially compete for food. A closer look showed that three of the six, a large, a medium, and a small one live in the forest canopy and never come to the ground.. Not only do millions of species of plants and animals live in rainforests, but many people also call the rainforest their home.
Indenous, or native, people have lived in rainforests for thousands of years. In North and South America they ere mistakenly named Indians by Christopher Columbus, who thought that he had landed in Indonesia, then called the East Indies. The native people of the rainforest live very different lives than us. In this section, I will explain how very different our lives differ than from the indigenous people of the rainforest. Besides haunting, gathering wild fruits and nuts and fishing, Indigenous people also plant small gardens for other sources of food, using a sustainable farming method called shifting cultivating.
First they clear a small area of land and burn it. Then they plant many types of plants, to be used for food and medicines. After a few years, the soil has become too poor to allow for more crops to grow and weeds to start to take over. So they then move to a nearby uncleared area. This land is traditionally allowed to regrow 10-50 years before it is farmed again. Shifting cultivation is still practiced by those tribes who have access to a large amount of land. However, with the growing number of non-Indigenous farmers and the shrinking rainforest, other tribes, especially in Indonesia and Africa, are now forced to remain in one area.
The land becomes a wasteland after a few years of overuse, and cannot be used for future agriculture. If tribal children don’t go to schools like ours. Instead, they learn about the forest around them from their parents and other people in the tribe. They are taught how to survive in the forest. They learn how to hunt and fish, and which plants are useful as medicines or food. Some of these children know more about rainforests than scientists who have studied rainforests for many years. The group of societies known as Europeans includes such cultures such as Spanish and German.
Similarly, the broad group, Indigenous peoples includes many distinct culture groups, each with its own traditions. For instance, plantains a type of banana) are a major food source for the Yanonami from the Amazon while the Penan of Borneo, Southeast Asia, depend on the sago palm (a type of palm tree) for food and other uses. All Indigenous people share their strong ties to the land. Because the rainforest is so important for their culture, they want to take care of it. They want to live what is called a sustainable existence, meaning they use the land without doing harm to the plants and animals that also call the rainforest their home.
As a wise Indigenous man once said, “The earth is our historian, our educator, the provider of food, medicine, clothing nd protection. She is the mother of our races. “(11) Indigenous peoples have been losing their lives and the land they live on ever since Europeans began colonizing 500 years ago. Most of them died from common European diseases which made Indigenous people very sick because they had never had these diseases before. A disease such as the flu could possibly kill an indigenous person because he/she has not been exposed to this disease before.
Many Indigenous groups have also been killed by settlers wanting their land, or put to work as slaves to harvest the resources of the forest. Others were converts to Christianity by missionaries, who forced them to live like Europeans and give up their cultural traditions. Until about forty years ago, the lack of roads prevented most outsiders from exploiting the rainforest. These roads, constructed for timber and oil companies, cattle ranchers and miners, have destroyed millions of acres each year. All of the practices force Indigenous people off their land.
Because they do not officially own it, governments and other outsiders do not recognize their rights to the land. They have no other choice but to move to different areas, sometimes even to the crowded cities. They often live in overty because they have no skills useful for a city lifestyle and little knowledge about the culture. For example, they know more about gathering food from the forest than buying food from a store. It’s like being forced to move to a different country, where you knew nothing about the culture or language.
Indigenous groups are beginning to fight for their land, most often through peaceful demonstrations. Such actions may cause them to be arrested or even to lose their lives, but they know that if they take no action, their land and culture could be lost forever. Kaypo Indians, for example, recently spoke to the United States Congress to protest the building of dams in the Amazon, and were arrested when they arrived back in Brazil, accused of being traitors to their own country. In Malaysia, the Penean have arrested for blocking logging roads.
Many people living outside of rainforests went to help protect the Indigenous people’s culture. They understand that Indigenous people have much to teach us about rainforests. Since we (the US and other countries) have been working with the Indigenous People and other rainforest protection agencies, we have learned many things about the forest, including it’s ecology, medicinal plants, ood and other products. It has also showed us how crucial it is for the Indigenous people of the rainforest to continue their daily and traditional activities because of their importance in the cycle if the rainforest.
It has shown us that they have the right to practice their own lifestyle, and live upon the land where there ancestors have lived before them. (2) One such example of a invasion of the Ingenious people’s privacy is a new so called “emergency” called the Cofan Emergency. This dispute is about an Indigenous tribe called the Cofan. Historically, the Cofan occupied some half a million acres of rainforest long the Aguarico River in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Because their traditional territory has been significantly reduced through invasions by oil companies such as Texaco, the Cofan now live in five small, discontinuous communities.
However, they still utilize and protect a region of about 250,000 acres, including two reserves in the Amazon. In addition to displacing the Cofan and other indigenous groups, oil development, which began in this region over thirty years ago, has also caused serious environmental destruction. The deforestation of some two million acres of rainforest and contamination f the regions waterways has resulted in the loss of plant and animal diversity, and drastically affected the social and economic well-being of local Indigenous peoples. This devastation continues.
Last year, ten new concessions were licensed to international oil companies in the Ecuadorian Amazon, opening an additional five million acres of forest to oil development. One of these oil blocks, Block 11 awarded to the US-based Santa Fe Energy, lies within Cofan territory and will directly affect at least three communities. In order to protect the remaining intact rainforest areas of their homeland and the adjacent cological reserves, the Cofan are seeking $5,000 to purchase an outboard motor and a video camera, in order to coordinate between disperse communities and document the destruction caused by oil development.
Cofan leaders plan to work with their communities and document the destruction caused by oil development. Also they planned to work with their communities to organize against further environmental destruction by the oil companies. This grant will also cover for legal costs to demarcate the Cofan community lands. In the next section of this term paper, I will be discussing a subject relating to the ainforest called habitat fragmentation. Fragmentation of a habitat, by its very nature, reduces the total amount of area of the original habitat type.
Two researchers, Ann Keller and John Anderson suggest that the absolute habitat loss of pristine habitat and the reduced density of resources associated with fragmentation potentially impacts the biota (the plant and animal life of a region) more than any single factor. Habitat fragmentation affects the flora and fauna (plants and animals) of a given ecosystem by replacing a naturally occurring ecosystem with a human-dominated landscape which may be nhospitable to a certain number of the original species.
However, in direct contrast to the ocean as a geographic barrier, the human landscape matrix is typically accessible to plants and animals, in that they are able to easily disperse across it, if not reside in it. On the other hand, the human landscape may directly contribute to the extinction of species by slanting the ecosystem balance of species which are highly adaptable to changing conditions. For example, the increased amount of human-dominated landscape allows certain species to grow phenomenally, which can result in harm to species which rely exclusively on very scarce areas .
A commonly referred to example of this is a bird called the brown-headed cowbird. This bird is best characterized as a “nest parasite” because it because it replaces the eggs of another species with eggs of their own , allowing the other species to incubate and raise their young. Their increased numbers have had negative effects on the reproductive successfulness of many forest-dwelling birds. In addition to titling the ecosystem balance in favor of species which are highly adaptable, the loss of habitat associated with habitat fragmentation may simply cause the other, less adaptable species rates to decline.