Threats to the Rainforests (2)

Politics cannot be ignored. These refugees are a small part of the 250,000 who fled the violence of Guatemala into southern Mexico in the late 1970's and early 1980's. These people settled in the previously primal Lacandon Rainforest, clearing vast areas to grow food.

Another social-political issue destroying the rainforest is worldwide cocaine addiction. Huge areas of rainforest in South America are being cleared for the cultivation of coca, and the processing of coca into cocaine has resulted in many tons of kerosene being dumped into rivers and the ground in these areas.

Overwhelmingly, though, the problem is poverty. When you're poor, you don't have electricity. The only way to cook your food is over a fire. That means wood. The simple requirement of cooking puts a terrible strain on the rainforest.

And if you want to eat, you often have to grow your own food. In Guatemala, you can see in this highland village that farming is expanding from the valley up the hillsides.

And the face of this mountain is actually cornfields! The campesinos (peasant farmers) have to lower themselves into their fields on ropes to work the land, and sometimes they fall to their death! These people are not bad people - they are just trying to feed their families!

Although there is little excuse for those who wantonly take living things out of the rainforest for display purposes. In Iquitos, Peru, you can buy everything from dead butterflies to Anaconda skins to live birds. Fortunately international treaties are making it harder to deal in endangered species!

And the harvesting of this rainforest plant, which some feel has medicinal value, requires that the plant be killed. Entire areas of rainforest are being stripped of this vine.

Will this be the rainforest legacy we leave to our grandchildren?

And this?

Learn to love and respect the rainforest, and it will still be there when you get the opportunity to see it!

Although Costa Rica has deforestation problems like every country, they are working very hard to preserve what they have. One fourth of all land in Costa Rica is now protected through private or public preservation efforts!

And when you want to go - it will be waiting for you!