What does the Amazon rainforest offer us?
28 December 2023 (288 visits)Trees, oxygen, water, wildlife: protecting the Amazon offers a healthy future for us all. An adequately protected Amazon rainforest is important to both the people who live there, and to people throughout the world.
The Amazon basin is home to the biggest tropical rainforest on Earth. It covers approximately 40% of South America, accounting for more than 1.6 billion acres of the territory of nine countries. This vast wilderness area is nourished by the glaciers, streams, rivers and wetlands of the high Andes, on the eastern flank of the continent, which feed rivers that flow all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.
Across South America, the tropical forests we help to protect at Tambopata Ecolodge are home to more than 10% of the world’s known wildlife species, and an average of 100 new species are discovered each year.
And in addition to being a biodiversity hotspot, the Amazon is home to many indigenous groups. Diverse ethnic groups with their own individual culture and language continue to live largely traditional lifestyles, dependent upon the forests for their survival. Many of these ethnic groups remain uncontacted, choosing to live in voluntary isolation from the modern world.
While ecotourism like our own conservation-based sustainable tourism model contributes increasingly to national economies across South America, the forests and water of the Amazon are crucial resources for the economic development of South America as a whole. It is estimated that around 70% of the continent’s GDP is produced in areas that receive water from the Amazon basin.
When you visit the Amazon rainforest and stay with us at our comfortable jungle eco-lodge as part of your Peru vacation, you are helping us to continue the work to protect the rainforest that we began more than thirty years ago.
