From Rainforest Alliance website: http://www.rainforest-alliance.org/kids/facts/tropical-forest

What is a Tropical Forest?

Tropical rainforests are home to over half the world’s species, all squeezed into a narrow strip of equatorial land. They are also home to millions of human beings that have been a part of forest ecosystem for thousands of years. Together, tropical forests form a gallery of the most beautiful, awe-inspiring places and creatures on Earth.  Since the beginning of history, humans have relied on tropical forests.  The “jungle” provided our ancient ancestors with a steady supply of wood, plants and animals, and it gave us many of our first fruits, fibers, grains, medicines, cloths, resins, pigments and other materials. As the millennia passed and many human communities moved farther and farther away from the Tropics, our ties to the forest did not weaken. Major trade routes, and even empires, developed to control the flow of the tropical forest’s treasures.

Today, most of the industrialized world senses little connection to the tropical forest, living in large, busy cities far away from these fertile ecological powerhouses. We forget that the forest regularly saves our global food supply by offering new, disease-resistant crops. We forget about the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of trade in tropical timber, non-timber forest products and forest-derived drugs. We forget about things that are ultimately beyond value: the livelihoods of millions of forest peoples, a stable and livable climate for us all, the existence of most of our fellow species, and simple things we take for granted, like regular rain and clean air.

In tropical nations, many developing and debt-ridden, the forest is cleared in the hope of securing an economic future. Huge industrial interests, including timber, agriculture and mining, see an “endless,” profitable supply of cheap resources just waiting to be taken. Meanwhile, family farmers and loggers feel they have no option but to deforest in order to feed their families. However, innumerable studies and recent history show that little security can be found in tropical deforestation.

Thus far, our human family has erased half of our original endowment of tropical forests. Our world is now facing the greatest extinction crisis since the fall of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The future of over 50 percent of Earth’s plants and animals — and hundreds of human cultures — will be determined within the next few decades. Since our lives are so dependent on the forest’s bounty, our future is at stake as well.

The Rainforest Alliance’s little green frog is recognized by consumers around the world as the symbol of environmental, social and economic sustainability. Click on the froggy logo to go to a listing of products bearing the Rainforest Alliance Certified™ seal that are available for direct purchase by consumers.

The Unconquered tells the extraordinary tale    of a journey into the deepest recesses of the Amazon to track one of the planet’s last uncontacted indigenous tribes. In this gripping first-person account of adventure and survival, the author follows a 34-man team into the Amazon’s uncharted depths, discovering the rainforest’s secrets while moving ever closer to a possible encounter with the mysterious flecheiros– or “People of the Arrow” – a seldom-glimpsed tribe of deft archers known to defend their lands with showers of deadly arrows before melting back into the forest shadows.

Amazon Watch is proud to support the launch of The Unconquered, a book that compellingly illustrates the crucial but increasingly precarious role indigenous peoples play in the survival of the world’s largest rainforest. The protection of uncontacted tribes – and of the globe’s most remote regions in which they live – is of fundamental importance to the rest of us. As go uncontacted indigenous peoples, so goes the Amazon; and that has global implications for the future of humanity.

Amazon Watch

This year’s luncheon was a celebration of fifteen years of achievements for the people and rainforests of the Amazon and the launch of new initiatives to advance alternatives to large dams in the Brazilian Amazon, secure land rights for indigenous peoples in Peru, and bring clean water to oil affected communities in Ecuador.

Our special guest was Brazilian indigenous leader Sheyla Yakarepi Juruna, an unwavering defender of the Xingu River and indigenous rights in Brazil and key spokesperson for the campaign to stop the Belo Monte Dam.

Last Stand for the Xingu River

Chief Megaron Txukarramãe

Chief Megaron Txukarramãe addressed the crowd at the recent Piaraçu assembly.

Blended into the deciduous forests of Mato Grosso in Brazil’s Upper Xingu River basin, the village of Piaraçu is as much a home to the Kayapó people as a symbol of their fortitude, forged by sustained cultural and political struggle for rights and territory. It is also where, after decades of indigenous resistance against the damming of the Xingu, the Kayapó are leading last ditch attempts to defend the river, its peoples, and its forests from the impending Belo Monte Dam Complex.

In Piaraçu for three days, I had the honor of participating in an extraordinary, inspiring, and historic gathering of 320 indigenous representatives from 18 ethnicities from the Xingu basin and beyond. We were joined as well by leaders of the Xingu Alive Forever Movement (MXVPS), who brought news from endangered communities of Altamira. Called by the legendary elder Kayapó Chief Raoni Metyktire, this assembly aimed to discuss the impending human rights and environmental disaster that is the Belo Monte Dam on the Lower Xingu – in particular the menace it represents to Brazil’s indigenous peoples – and ways for its opponents to forge a single and unified force to resist its construction.

Kayapó warriors

The days and nights of the Kayapo meeting were marked by fierce speeches denouncing Belo Monte and its government protagonists, punctuated by the spontaneous and colorful dances of different groups that demonstrated the rich cultural diversity of those in attendance. Their bodies streaked with intricate body paint designs and adorned with beads, feathers, and bright headdresses, leaders and warriors brandished long battle clubs and bows, shaking them defiantly at the government that has chosen to dismiss them, ignoring their pleas and trampling on their rights. As the meeting progressed, the piercing songs of men and women grew in intensity, matched by their anger and thirst for justice and recognition, bearing witness to the power of these people, who are committed to overcoming severe and escalating threats to their way of life.

Kayapó warriors demonstrated their great opposition to the impending Belo Monte Dam project which would change their way of life forever.

Sign this petition to send a clear message to the Brazilian government.  Watch the video here: http://amazonwatch.org/take-action/stop-the-belo-monte-monster-dam