Essay on Rainforest

We all understand about the important of rainforests to our life. Rainforests are house of many plant and animal species. Besides that, they also are lungs of earth. They provide oxygen and a lot of other benefits to people such as diminish bad influence of green house effect. Therefore, preserve rainforest is the responsibility of us all.

Most of rainforests are distributed in host climates. A largest area of rainforest is in the Amazon River basin of South America, another part lies in Indonesia, Congo basin and existed scattered around the globe in tropical. Rainforests often have highest rainfall and biodiversity in all kinds of forest. There are 40 to 70% of all species on the habitats of world are indigenous to the rainforests and many millions of species of plants, insects and microorganisms are still undiscovered (Wikipedia). Rainforests maintain biodiversity, create rain, carbon storage and climate regulation. They reduce the bad influences of greenhouse effect. Besides that, it is a huge warehouse of drug; many natural medicines have been discovered there. According to statistics, about 121 prescription drug sold over the world are derived from plants and 25% of material used for western medicines derived from rainforests. Additionally, rainforests also provide food for people and raw materials for industry. 3000 or more kinds of fruits are found in the rainforests and "at least 80% of the developed world's diet originated in the tropical rainforest" such as corn, potatoes, rice, coffee, vanilla, nuts and cashews (source: Raintree).

According to research of Rhett A. Butler, thousands of years ago, the area of rainforests cover more than 15.5 million square km, it had about 12 percent of the Earth's land surface. Although, rainforests just have less than 5 percent with 2.41 million square miles today. A large area of rain was destroyed by many reasons. The local people destroyed rainforest for farmland. For example, in Peru the forest was cleared to grow coca and in Indonesia, the situation becomes worse when forests are destroyed for palm. Besides, the rivers are polluted with mercury by gold miners. Especially, rainforest are being destroy because the value of timber by governments and multi-national logging company. An estimated, more than 200 thousand acres of rainforest are burned every day, more than 20% area of the Amazon rainforest is already gone and more than 50 thousand plant and animal species are losing every year. In 2001, 116000 square miles of forest were destroyed in Brazil and Indonesia. These are really alarming number. The deforestation not only has bad effect to rainforest and its ecosystem, but also has adverse impacts on the Earth's environment. The greenhouse effect make the Earth warmer, polar ice is melting, floods and drought deficit occurred in many countries. Thus, preserve rainforests and their ecosystem is really necessary. Government should find out good