Half the World’s Rainforests Are One Single Forest

Quick Take

• Thousands of Amazon plants could reshape how we fight one of humanity's most feared diseases, yet most people have no idea they exist. Explore Amazon medicinal plants →
• The Amazon does something for the planet that has nothing to do with trees, and the scale of it will catch you off guard. See the ecological scale →
• Deforestation in the Amazon was accelerating, but something reversed the trend almost overnight. Discover deforestation trends →
• Sixty groups of people live inside the Amazon almost completely cut off from the outside world, and what that isolation reveals is stranger than you'd expect. Meet isolated indigenous peoples →
• Scientists spent a decade cataloguing the Amazon and kept finding things that shouldn't still be unknown in the modern era. See what scientists uncovered →

The Amazon rainforest is the largest on Earth, covering around 40 percent of the South American continent. Parts of this vast broadleaf forest span nine different countries, namely Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana. More than half of the Amazon rainforest — in fact, 60 percent of it — is found in Brazil.

Covering most of the Amazon Basin across South America, the Amazon rainforest makes up half of the world’s remaining rainforests and is home to the largest and most biodiverse tract of tropical rainforest on Earth. An estimated 16,000 species of trees alone are found throughout its 5,500,000 square kilometre (2,100,000 sq mile) territory.

Here are a few fascinating facts about the Amazon rainforest that you may not know:

• The Amazon rainforest absorbs two billion tonnes of carbon dioxide every year.
• There are around 2.5 million insect species found in the Amazon rainforest.
• 2,200 fish species, 1,294 birds, 427 mammals, 428 amphibians, and 378 reptiles have been discovered in the Amazon rainforest.
• More than 2,000 tropical forest plants have been found to have anti-cancer properties.
• The Amazon basin holds 20 percent of the world’s fresh water, and the Amazon rainforest produces the same percentage of the world’s oxygen.
• More than 1.4 million square kilometres of the Amazon rainforest have been cleared since the 1970s, and an even larger area has been affected by logging and forest fires.
• One in five of the world’s bird species and one in five of the world’s fish species are found in the Amazon rainforest and the Amazon River.
• The Amazon rainforest is home to 2.7 million indigenous people divided into 350 different ethnic groups, 60 of which remain highly isolated.
• Between 1999 and 2009, 1,200 species of plants and animals were identified for the first time in the Amazon rainforest.
• Deforestation rates have dropped drastically since 2004 as more land has been placed under conservation.