• One piece of tropical rainforest the size of a classroom houses more species than in all New England.
• We loose 80 acres a minute, 115,00 acres a day, 42 million acres per year.
• In Brazil alone, 5.4 million acres are lost per year.
• In 1500 6-9 million idigenous peoples inhabited the Brazilian rainforest. In 1992 less than 200,00 remain.
• It is currently estimated that at least 48 species of life forms are driven into extiction every day; or 17,500 each year.
• The economic value of one acre of Peruvian Amazon: $6,820 if intact forest is sustainable harvested for fruits, latex, and timber. $1,000 if clear-cut for commercial timber. $148 is used as cattle pasture.
• Four-fifths of the nutrients in the rainforest are in the vegetation. This means that the soils are nutrient-poor and become eroded and unproductive within a few years after the rainforest is cleared.

Most of these facts were borrowed off of Rainforest Action Network's fact sheets. They are an awesome organizaion, and if you want more info. about the rainforest or how to help preserve it, contact them at: rainforest@igc.apc.org Or link to their homepage: