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Tropical Rainforests Quick
Facts |
 QUICK FACTS - Tropical Rainforests |
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- Tropical rainforests cover less than 3% of the Earth's surface, but they contain between 50% and 70% of all plant and animal species.
- Tropical rainforests are the Earth’s oldest living ecosystems. Fossil records show that the forests of Southeast Asia have existed in more or less their present form for 10 to 100 million years.
- Tropical rainforests are found in lands on or near the Equator. They are usually very hot, with temperatures between 26 and 28ºC.
- Plants from rainforests are used to provide the raw materials for many important medicines that we need.
- Forests help to prevent global warming because trees act like natural sponges, soaking up carbon dioxide from the air. But many forests are being destroyed or damaged by logging, farming and clearing of land to meet growing human needs.
- Many of the foods we eat today originated in rainforests: bananas, cashew nuts, cinnamon, mangoes, pineapples, cocoa, avocados, black pepper are but a few examples. Over 1,600 of the rainforest's plants are edible and could be used as vegetables.
- Unfortunately, rainforests are still in danger. In the time it has taken for you to read this fact, an area the size of one square kilometre will have been cut down. This equates to an area the size of England, Scotland and Wales combined, being lost every year.
- Rainforests are important to every living thing on earth. Only by educating others and ourselves can we help save them.
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