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“The Brazilian Amazon Rainforest is a national inheritance, and its use will be performed within law requirements, which assure the environment preservation, even with regard to the use of its natural resources”.

Having its enforcement to be implemented on municipal, state and federal levels, thus assuring THE IMMEDIATE INTERRUPTION OF THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON RAINFOREST DEFORESTATION. NOW!

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The Amazon Rainforest (Brazilian Portuguese: Floresta Amazônica or Amazônia; Spanish: Selva Amazónica or Amazonía) is a moist broadleaf forest in the Amazon Basin of South America. The area, also known as Amazonia or the Amazon Basin, encompasses seven million square kilometers (1.2 billion acres), though the forest itself occupies some 5.5 million square kilometers, located within nine nations: Brazil (with 60 percent of the rainforest), Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana. States or departments in four nations bear the name Amazonas after it. The Amazon represents over half of the planet’s remaining rainforests and comprises the largest and most species-rich tract of tropical rainforest in the world.

The amazon has a wide variety of rare species. The name Amazon is said to arise from a war which Francisco de Orellana had with a tribe of Tapuyas where the women of the tribe fought alongside the men, as was the custom among the entire tribe. (Orellana’s descriptions may have been accurate, but a few historians speculate that Orellana could have been mistaking indigenous men wearing “grass skirts” for women.) Orellana derived the name Amazonas from the ancient Amazons of Asia and Africa described by Herodotus and Diodorus in Greek legends. Another etymology for the word suggests that it came originally from a native word amazona (Spanish spelling) or amassona (Portuguese spelling), meaning “destroyer (of) boats”, in reference to the destructive nature of the root system possessed by some riparian plants.

Deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest threatens many species of tree frogs, which are very sensitive to environmental changes (pictured: Giant leaf frog)
Wet tropical forests are the most species-rich biome, and tropical forests in the Americas are consistently more species rich than the wet forests in Africa and Asia. As the largest tract of tropical rainforest in the Americas, the Amazonian rainforests have unparalleled biodiversity. More than 1/3 of all species in the world live in the Amazon Rainforest.

The region is home to about 2.5 million insect species[citation needed], tens of thousands of plants, and some 2000 birds and mammals. To date, at least 40,000 plant species, 3,000 fish, 1,294 birds, 427 mammals, 428 amphibians, and 378 reptiles have been scientifically classified in the region. Scientists have described between 96,660 and 128,843 invertebrate species in Brazil alone.

The diversity of plant species is the highest on earth with some experts estimating that one square kilometre may contain over 75,000 types of trees and 150,000 species of higher plants. One square kilometer of Amazon rainforest can contain about 90,790 tonnes of living plants. This constitutes the largest collection of living plants and animal species in the world. One in five of all the birds in the world live in the rainforests of the Amazon. To date, an estimated 438,000 species of plants of economic and social interest have been registered in the region with many more remaining to be discovered or catalogued.

Deforestation is the conversion of forested areas to non-forested areas. The main sources of deforestation in the Amazon are human settlement and development of the land. Between 1991 and 2000, the total area of forest lost in the Amazon rose from 415,000 to 587,000 km², an area twice the size of Portugal, with most of the lost forest becoming pasture for cattle. In February, 2008, the Brazilian government announced that the rate at which the Amazon rainforest is being cut down has increased significantly over the past few months. During the last five months of 2007, more than 3,200 sq. kilometers (an area equivalent to the size of the state of Rhode Island) was deforested during a time when deforestation would normally drop.

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You will be able to buy the SPECIAL version of the “Plant a Tree” T-Shirt, featuring the Aquaverde logo, at our stand in the village du monde at the Paleo music festival in Nyon, from July 22nd to 27th.

Price: CHF 33.-

Please send us an e-mail if you wish to pre-reserve one: e-mail us

Available sizes:

T-Shirt man S / M / L / XL / XXL
T-Shirt woman S / M / L / XL

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As is required by the Surui oral tradition, time is taken to listen and learn from indigenous wisdom, and then review of past work. Planification and agreement on this years work can then take place in trust, with all the responsible persons for the PAMINE (rebirth in Surui) reforestation programme.

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See the Tikan aldeia reforestation area in 3D on google earth, download the kmz file by clicking here or on the above image and open it in google earth.

(Useful tip: In Google Earth preferences, set “Elevation Exaggeration” to 1.5)

If you haven’t got it yet, you can Download Google Earth here.

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Join us in telling everyone about it and use it, so that thousands of trees can be planted. You can download this banner and many more on www.ecoogler.com from the “support us” page.

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Chief Almir Surui was guest speaker, together with Sir John Attenborough at the Google headquarter on the 10th of April 2008, during the London launch ceremony of Google outreach program.

The last thing you’d expect an Amazonian tribe who have only recently had contact with the modern world to do is to team up with a technology giant; but that’s exactly what the Surui people have done.

The Surui tribe have partnered with Google, who they refer to as ragogmakan - meaning “messenger”, to help monitor illegal logging in their traditional lands. Google is known as ragogmakan as they hope the company’s massive reach will help to alert the world to the dire situation in their part of the Amazon.

There’s not just trees and animals at stake here, but the Surui people themselves are faced with extinction. The situation has become so bad that loggers regularly murder indigenous peoples if they get in the way - the Surui chief is constantly facing death threats.

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