Biodiversity

The survival of the Amazon has great ramifications for life across the planet. A healthy and intact Amazon forest will help stabilize the climate patterns on which world economies and ecosystems depend, and will continue to serve as the planet’s greatest storehouse of biodiversity, sheltering a vast array of species of potentially profound value to human health. The Amazon Conservation Team was formed to ensure that the invaluable resources and services provided by the Amazon may continue to exist for the benefit of future generations. With your help and support, ACT is working hard to ensure that these forests continue to sustain us.

The Amazon rainforest is the most diverse terrestrial ecosystem on the planet. Despite covering only approximately 6% of the Earth’ s surface, it is home to more varieties of plants and animals than any other place on Earth. This astounding level of biodiversity has already shaped the course of human history in a variety of ways, such as providing the first cure for malaria, and the first source of rubber, which helped fuel the industrial revolution. Yet only a small fraction of the species in the Amazon have been examined for their potential benefits to humankind.

Meanwhile, deforestation, which has already claimed nearly 20% of the Amazon’s original primary rainforest, continues at a steady rate. At the same rate the Amazon forest disappears, so diminishes our opportunity to understand this ecosystem and its relationship to other life on Earth.

Research on climate change has provided yet another compelling reason for protecting the tropical forests: the evidence strongly suggests that their continued health mitigates global warming and protects the value of agricultural croplands.