Amazon Forest

Amazon Forest is the largest tropical rainforest in the world, covering over five and a half a million square kilometers. The Amazon rainforest, also known as Amazonia, is one of the world's greatest natural resources. Because its vegetation continuously recycles carbon -

dioxide into oxygen, it has been described as the "Lungs of our Planet". About 20% of earth's oxygen is produced by the Amazon rainforest.

Amazon Forest gets its name from the Amazon River, the life force of the rainforest. The Amazon River begins in the Peruvian Andes, and winds its way east over the northern half of South America. It meets the Atlantic Ocean at Belem, Brazil. The main river is about 4,080 miles long. Its drainage basin covers 2,722,000 million square miles, and lies in the countries of Brazil, Columbia, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and the three Guyanas. The basin covers an area of approximately 2.5 million square miles (650 million hectares) which is approximately 40% of South America. If superimposed on the United States, it would cover nearly all of the contiguous 48 states. Sixteen percent of all the world's river water flows through the Amazon delta. Twenty eight billion gallons of water flow into the Atlantic every minute, diluting the salinity of the ocean for more than 100 miles offshore.

Amazon Forest watershed is home to the world's highest level of biodiversity. The Amazon Rainforest is the world’s richest and most varied biological reservoir, containing several million species of insects, plants, birds, and other forms of life, many still unrecorded by science. It is a birders paradise containing more species than any other ecosystem, and there are more than 4,000 species of butterflies. The luxuriant vegetation encompasses a wide variety of trees, including many species of myrtle, laurel, palm, and acacia, as well as rosewood, Brazil nut, and rubber tree. Excellent timber is furnished by the mahogany and the Amazonian cedar. The lush forests of the Amazon basin are home to reptiles, amphibians, primates, tapirs, capybaras, jaguar, manatee, tapir, red deer, capybara and many other types of rodents, and several types of monkeys. The river itself contains freshwater dolphins, manatee and more than 2,000 species of fish which incidentally is more species than has been recorded for the entire Atlantic Ocean.

There is no best time to visit the Amazon forest; it depends what you want to see. The world normally sees the Amazonas Jungle as a reserve of oxygen, but it is much more than that: Amazon Forest is home to a very special people and a living laboratory of plant and animal life.