FACTS ABOUT FORESTS

• The largest rainforest in the world is the Amazon.  It occupies 2.5 million square miles and covers 1/3 of South America.  It is 2/3 the size of the U.S.--including Alaska and Hawaii, and it accounts for 1/2 the world's remaining rainforest.
• The 2nd largest Rainforest is the Congolese Rainforest in North Africa.  Perhaps 90% of the species of plants and animals in this Rainforest have not yet been discovered. 
• Plants can grow more rapidly in tropical rainforests than any other natural environments, because of the long hours of sunshine and large amount of rainfall.
• The largest tree is the Giant Sequoia.  it grows more than 260 feet high and weighs 2000 tons.  (Just think.  An elephant only weighs 5 tons!)
• Every minute, an area of Rainforest the size of 20 American football fields is destroyed. 
• In Peru, the famous scientist Edward Wilson found 43 species of ant on just one tree! 
• Tropical rainforests only cover about 6% of the earth's surface, but they contain over half of the earth's species.
• Trees are the tallest living things.  A California Redwood can grow up to 367 feet tall!  That is as high as 63 men! 
• At least half the plants used for medicine come from the rainforest.
• Each year, 12 million acres of Rainforest are felled.
• In the United States, most people use about 2 trees' worth of paper each year.
• 300 species of trees are found in an average 2.5 acres of forest in Peru.  Compare that number to a typical forest in Ohio, which has only 7 species in the same amount of land.
• One edition of a major daily newspaper, such as the LA Times, New York Times or the Chicago Tribute uses wood from as many as 5000 trees.
• Each year, an estimated 25,000 species vanish from the face of the earth. 
• Scientists have identified 850 thousand species of insects, but there are likely 30 million or more that have not yet been named or described.
• A patch of rainforest 4 square miles typically has 125 mammal species, 400 bird species, 100 reptile species, 60 amphibian species, 150 kinds of butterflies, and probably more than 40,000 species of insects!
• About 27 million more acres of trees are cut down each year than are planted.
• There are more species of tree in one acre of tropical rainforest than in all the forests of North America combined.
• Right now, forests cover about 1/3 of the world's land surface.
• THERE IS HOPE!  Following 2 centuries of decline, the area of forest land in the United States has stabilized.  The U.S. has the same forest area today as it did in 1920.
• The area consumed by wildfire each year has fallen by 90% since the early 1900s.  Now, only 2 to 5 million acres of forest are lost to wildfire each year.