8. What are the dangers that threaten the Amazon rainforest?

A lot of the Amazon rainforest is in danger and may even disappear in half a century. Many trees are illegally felled, putting life at serious risk in South America and throughout the Earth. In the Amazon, the destruction of forests is well advanced to make way for land destined for agriculture, livestock, the timber sector, oil and mining exploitation, construction of roads, oil pipelines, gas pipelines, hydroelectric dams and urbanization. In addition, about 30 million people live in the Amazon basin. All this represents a large-scale human intervention, never before occurred on the planet, as we described in our magazine “All about the Amazon rainforest”, profusely illustrated with images and videos.

It has been said on several occasions that in the Amazon the equivalent of the area of three football fields is deforested every minute using “tree harvesters”, increasingly “efficient”, capable of “processing” and “dispatching” in a matter of seconds a tree, which has taken ten or a hundred years to grow. There are numerous videos showing these machines. In one of them we saw a machine that fells, cuts the branches, and chops up seven trees in three minutes. This is equivalent to 140 trees per hour, with a single operator. How many trees does he uproot in an 8-hour day? How many trees do 100 of these machines cut down in one day? How many in a year of 300 days? How long does it take 100 machines to cut down 10 million trees? Do your calculations and you will see the magnitude of the problem that is upon us, if we do not tackle it.

In our Amazon Magazine, SGK-PLANET has identified 12 dangers that hang over the lungs of the world:

1. Cutting down trees to supply the wood, paper, and other industries. 2. Oil palm planting. 3. Sowing of soybeans. 4. Extensive agriculture. 5. Livestock breeding. 6. Oil exploitation. 7. Oil pipelines. 8.Gas pipelines. 9. Mining. 10. Roads through the jungle. 11. Hydroelectric dams that flood and disrupt ecosystems. 12. Urbanization of the jungle.

We recommend these related reading:

Heat waves, fires, and climate change

Forests and water, two inseparable and essential factors

How Borneo already had its own Climate Change made by human hands

The Homo predator in Borneo

What would happen if the Amazon rainforest ends up like the Borneo rainforest?

Magazine All about Amazon rainforest