Why should we save the rainforest?
1. The rainforest is a vital part of the Earth's ecosystem. It provides the home for more than half of all species on Earth.
2. Vital medicine plants, including plants that can cure cancer, rhymatism, heart diseases and most illnesses of humankind, grow in the rainforest. Many have yet to be discovered. Many may never be found due to the rapid destruction of the rainforest - we have lost half of the worlds' rainforests since 1991!
3. The rainforest is the home of many indiginous tribes, whose culture is based on a sustainable lifestyle living in harmony with the planet and their environment. As part of their culture they hold the green key to much ancient wisdom and knowledge of the rainforest.
4. The rainforest plays a vital role in the Earth's climate regulation. Kept intact it can contribute to stabilise the Earth's climatic system and counteract the effect of global warming.
Tropical rainforests are the most diverse ecosystems on earth. A four-square mile patch of rainforest contains as many as 1500 species of flowering plants, 750 species of trees, 125 species of mammals, 400 species of birds, 100 species of reptiles, 60 species of amphibians, and 150 species of butterflies. More than 50% of the world's plant and animal species inhabit the 6% of the world that is covered in rainforest. (Species Endangered By a Diminishing Ecology)
Orangutans in Indonesia are getting sick due to use of euthanasia to stop orangutans from raiding palm oil plantations - it's so called 'mercy killing', so not sure exactly what's going on here as orangutans are an endangered species it should be illegal to kill them, but is that what happens? After their essential life-providing forest, which gives them food and shelter, had been converted into a mono-culture palm oil plantation, they are obviously going to try and find food in the palm oil plantations that now covers their forest that they once called their home.
First deforested the trees supply cheap unsustainable wood for furniture. Then palm trees are planted and this palm oil is used to make Bio-Diesel to fuel our cars and produce food and consumer goods.