Land Use Conflict in the Amazon Rainforest

1. Land Use Conflict in the Amazon Rainforest

2. Key Vocabulary • Biodiversity: the variety of plants and animals living in one area. • Carbon-oxygen cycle: the process by which carbon and oxygen cycle among plants, people and animals, and the environment • Deforestation: removing or clearing away the trees from a forest. Deforestation is often done to clear land for farming or ranching • Sustainable development: using resources in ways that meet the needs of people today without hurting the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Finding ways to use resources without using them up. • Tropical rainforest: a broadleaf evergreen forest found in wet and hot regions near the equator

3. Groups in the Amazon • For thousands of years, small groups of indigenous peoples have made their home here making a living by hunting and gathering. • In recent times other groups have come to the rainforest, including rubber trappers, farmers, cattle ranchers, and loggers • The rainforest is also of great interest to environmental groups • Each group has different ideas of how the rainforest should be used, this has led to land use conflicts

4. Amazon Rainforest • Rainforest covers 2 million sq km in 6 different nations • Great biodiversity • 2.5 million insect species • Tens of thousands of plant species • 2,000 bird and animal species

5. Many Layered Ecosystem

6. Land Use • The Amazon Rainforest is highly valuable land to many! • Some people want to clear the land for farming or ranching • Deforestation • Others want to use more sustainable development

7. Lungs of the Earth • Rainforests play a key role in the carbon-oxygen cycle • Many fear that if too much of the rainforest (the Amazon and around the world) are lost the cycle will be interrupted