Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
the same pollster asks, 'Do you approve of destruction of the
rain forest
?' the answer will be 'No, it will
lead to global warming or a new ice age.' ”
But sorry, Mr. Safire. There are some differences. A rain forest typically has a high canopy and very
little undergrowth, while a jungle is densely undergrown. That makes quite a difference if you are trying
to get through one.
The word
jungle
comes from the Hindu and Sanskrit words for wasteland or desert, which seems odd
given our very moist image of a jungle. Only gradually did the word become associated with the now-fa-
miliar Tarzan-ish scene of dangling vines, deadly snakes, and incessant monkey chatter.
But in the past few years of heightened environmental passion,
jungle
has been macheted out of the
language. And
rain forest
has gone big time. Ben & Jerry's, the ice-cream company from the non-rain-
forested state of Vermont, sells “Rain Forest Crunch,” using nuts grown in the Amazon rain forest, with
a portion of their profits going to rain-forest preservation efforts. Supermarket shelves now carry lines of
“environmentally correct” rain-forest candy. Hollywood knows a good thing when it sees it. The 1992 film
Medicine Man
enjoyed a modest success, largely due to interest in rain-forest preservation. The cartoon
world has it both ways. The Disney cartoon feature
The Jungle Book
is adapted from Rudyard Kipling's
classic of the same name. And in 1992 a rain-forest feature called
FernGully: The Last Rain Forest
, was
released with the hope that it would do for rain forests what
Bambi
did for white-tailed deer.
There is another kind of jungle called a “monsoon forest” typical of India, Burma, and Southeast Asia.
(For more on monsoons and climate in general, see Chapter 5.) Unlike the tropical (or equatorial) rain
forests, where it rains all the time, monsoon forests have two distinct seasons, one wet, one dry. Since it
rains only half the time, maybe we should call it the “fifty-percent-chance-of-rain forest.”
Whether you call them rain forests or jungles, they are often large but also disappearing. North Amer-
ica's largest tropical rain forest, the Lacandona, is in the southeast Mexican state of Chiapas. Named for
a nation of Native Americans presumed to have descended from the Maya, the Lacandona rain forest
covered five thousand square miles (an area about the size of Connecticut) only fifty years ago. But since
1970, more than 60 percent of the lush but fragile forest has been lost to development.
The Amazon in South America is the world's largest rain forest. It is an area almost as big as most of
the United States and contains more species of plants and animals than any other place on earth. But large
tracts—as much as 4 percent each year—of the Amazon tropical rain forest have been burned and cleared
for cattle ranches, farms, lumber, and for tax incentives.
“So what?” you ask. Converting the wild jungle into usable land sounds like a pretty good idea. But
Mother Nature has different views. It is estimated that the Amazonian forest contains a
third of the planet's
trees
and supplies
20 percent of its oxygen.
Getting rid of such a huge part of the planet's “lungs” has an
impact way beyond Brazil's borders.
The burning of massive tracts of Brazil's rain forest has another dangerous consequence. The smoke
from these huge fires contributes to the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, potentially contrib-
uting to the “greenhouse effect” that will lead to global warming, a catastrophic rise in sea levels, and the
possibility of creating deserts where acres of wheat grow today.
Finally there is the issue of biodiversity, a fancy way of saying there are a lot of living things in the rain
forest we don't even know about. The destruction of rain-forest land is killing off an incredible number of
species whose value, particularly in the area of medical research, is unknown. Only recently has the issue
of species preservation come to the forefront of concern over rain-forest destruction, but it is potentially
the most significant reason to preserve the regions that remain.
IMAGINARY PLACES: Are There Amazons on the Amazon River?
