It has been said that forests came before human beings deserts followed them.
- A few thousand years ago a rainforest belt covered 14% of the earth land surface. Humanity has already destroyed half of that.
- The logging industry threatens large areas of rainforest around the world.
- Most of the harm has been done in the last 200 years - in particular since 1945.
- Latin America has 57% of the remaining rainforest.
- SE Asia and the Pacific Island have 25%;
- Africa has 18%.
- Between 40-50% of all types of living things, 5 million species of plants, animals, insects, live in tropical rainforests, though these cover less then 2% of the globe.
- The deforestation affected even indigenous people: anthropologists estimate that in 1500 the Amazon basin had a population of 6-9 million.
- In Brazil today there are less then 200,000 Indians; about half the 230 tribes who lived in Brazil at the turn of the century are now extinct.
- Due to the interference of man desertification is becoming a major problem as more and more of the world's land surface is turned into desert.
- It is estimated that 10 million hectares of productive land is lost every year to the desert.