By becoming vegetarian, you are helping to save
the rainforests.It is a fact that acres of rainforest are cut down each day
just to be used as flat land for the upbringing of cattle.
By not buying meat or food from meat-based takeaways such as McDonalds,
you are not contributing to the wealth of the loggers, who's job it is to
cut down rainforests.
Rainforests are a very important resource and it is very important that we protect them...
The rainforests have been called 'the lungs of the world' and help regulate
the earth's climate by absorbing rainfall and releasing it slowly into rivers.
When we clear huge tracts of rainforest for grazing land or houses and roads,
we destroy the water cycle that sustains life.Rain simply erodes precious topsoil,
polluting our waterways and causing flooding.When the trees that once held water
are gone, so is the moisture that used to be absorbed back into the atmosphere to
create rain.
Destroying a rainforest is also destroying our atmosphere.Rainforests could
help us battle the greenhouse effect we have created with our massive carbon
dioxide emissions.Trees absorb carbon naturally and store it in their trunks.
When we burn these trees down we release all this carbon dioxide back into
the atmosphere.
Conservationists believe that the burning of one rainforest alone
- the Amazon in South America- is responsible for 20 per cent of the world's
total carbon dioxide emissions.
Rainforests are literally teeming with life.They now cover only about 7
percent of the land on earth, but are home to between 50 and 90 per cent
of life on earth.We don't know exactly how many species of insects, plants, birds,
mammals and reptiles inhabit rainforests around the world because scientists
have barely begun to identify and name them all.
Much of the food and beverages we take for granted came from rainforests
originally.Tea, coffee, rice, peanuts, tomatoes, bananas, peaches and sugar
are just a few examples.Also,many other important products have their origins
in rainforests and include rubber, glue, soap, ink, many medicines, photographic
film and sunscreen.
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