The Amazon Rainforest

A huge moist leaf forest covering a great swathe of the top of South America, the Amazon spreads into nine countries, but is most of it falls within Brazil. As well as being the largest rainforest in the world and half the world's remaining rainforest, the Amazon has greater biodiversity than any other - and that's before everything here has even been found and dissected. More than a third of all the world's species live in the Amazon, as well as the vast range of plants there are more than two and a half million species of insect, 3000 kinds of fish, 1,200 types of bird, 370 kinds of reptiles and 420 different mammal species. If around 90,000 tonnes of living plant can come out of one square Amazon kilometre then imagine what has been lost in the 600,000+ square kilometres of rainforest which have been destroyed. As well as plants and animals there are still people living in the Amazon.