Exploring the Wonders of the Amazon: Nature, Wildlife, and Environmental Challenges

The Amazon Rainforest, covering approximately 2.3 million square miles, is located in northern South America and is the world’s largest tropical rainforest. It is vital for biodiversity, housing millions of species of plants, insects, and animals, including jaguars and various tree species. However, the rainforest has faced significant deforestation due to population growth and land clearing for agriculture and logging. Brazil, which contains about 60% of the Amazon basin, saw forest cover decrease from 1.58 million square miles in 1970 to 1.28 million square miles by 2016. Efforts to protect the forest gained traction in the 1990s, although deforestation rates slowed only slightly from 0.4% per year in the ’80s and ’90s to 0.1-0.2% between 2008 and 2016. Political actions, such as those by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, have exacerbated forest loss, highlighted by a dramatic rise in fires. In Ecuador, a failed 2007 plan aimed to preserve part of the rainforest in Yasuní National Park in exchange for international funding, which ultimately did not succeed, leading to oil extraction in 2016.

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