About Amazon Rainforest:
The Amazon Rainforest, a sizable tropical rainforest encompassing an area of 2,300,000 square miles in northern South America, is the drainage basin for the Amazon River and its tributaries (6,000,000 square km). It is surrounded by the Guiana Highlands to the north, the Andes Mountains to the west, the Brazilian central plateau to the south, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, making up nearly 40% of Brazil's total land area.
The forest of Amazonia, the world's biggest river basin, runs from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Andes' tree line in the west. Where the lowlands meet the Andean foothills, the forest expands from a 200-mile (320-km) front along the Atlantic to a belt 1,200 miles (1,900 km) broad. The region's heavy rainfall, high humidity, and consistently high temperatures are reflected in the rainforest's enormous area and continuity.
The Amazon Rainforest is the largest and most diverse biological reservoir on earth, home to millions of different species of birds, plants, insects, and other living things, many of which have not yet been identified by science. Many different varieties of myrtle, laurel, palm, and acacia trees, as well as rosewood, Brazil nuts, and rubber trees, are included in the lush vegetation. Exceptional wood is provided by mahogany and Amazonian cedar. Important species of animals include the jaguar, manatee, tapir, red deer, capybara, and several species of monkeys.
During the 20th century, large portions of the Amazon Rainforest were colonized by Brazil's quickly expanding population. Because of the clearing of the area by settlers for the production of lumber, grazing pastures, and farming, the extent of the Amazon forest drastically decreased. Brazil is home to around 60% of the Amazon Basin, and in 1970, forests occupied about 1,583,000 square miles (4,100,000 square kilometers) of this land. By 2016, the area covered by woods has decreased to around 1,283,000 square miles (3,323,000 square km), or 81 percent of the area covered by forests in 1970.
The Brazilian government and many foreign organizations launched initiatives to save portions of the forest from human encroachment, exploitation, deforestation, and other types of harm in the 1990s. Although the Amazon region of Brazil continues to lose forest cover, this loss has slowed considerably over the past decade, going from around 0.4 percent per year in the 1980s and 1990s to 0.1 to 0.2 percent per year between 2008 and 2016. However, the Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is a major supporter of forest cutting, encouraged around 75,000 fires to start in the Brazilian Amazon during the first half of 2019 (an increase of 85% over 2018).
In order to preserve a portion of the forest within its borders, which is located in Ya sun National Park (founded 1979), one of the world's most biodiverse regions, Ecuador came up with an innovative plan in 2007. The Ecuadoran government agreed to forego developing heavy oil deposits beneath Ya son rainforest in exchange for other nations and private donors contributing half of the deposits' value to a UN-administered trust fund for Ecuador. Only $6.5 million had been raised by the end of 2012, and Ecuador abandoned the project in 2013. The national oil firm started drilling in the park and extracting petroleum in 2016.
Expeditions began travelling up the Amazon River in search of the El Dorado. Before the Spanish and French came, there was a scramble to discover the gold before they did it on their own. The name was chosen, but neither the El Dorado nor the Amazons were ever discovered.
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