How old is the rainforest?
Rainforests have been around for tens of millions of years. The geographical extent of this ecosystem has expanded and diminished under the effect of continental drift and glaciation. How much rainforest is gone? In many parts of the tropics, current forest cover is only a fraction of what it was 50 years ago. For example, only 5% of Brazil’s incomparable Atlantic coastal forest remains. While the Amazonian rainforest is still largely intact due to its great size, recent data have shown that the scale and rates of deforestation there are actually greater than many published estimates, not less. Are rainforests the lungs of the earth? No, but mature forests such as the Amazon and elsewhere store huge amounts of carbon, found in vegetation. Burning the vegetation releases carbon dioxide. Will rainforests regenerate? In some cases this is possible, but the new forest will be a much poorer habitat, home to many fewer species of plants and animals. Rainforest fragmentation leads invariably
