FUN FACTS ABOUT THE AMAZON

• The Amazon is the world’s biggest rainforest, larger than the next two largest rainforests — in the Congo Basin and Indonesia — combined.

• The Amazon is estimated to have 16,000 tree species and 390 billion individual trees.

• The Amazon is thought to have 2.5 million species of insects. More than half the species in the Amazon rainforest are thought to live in the canopy.
• Nearly two-thirds of the Amazon rainforest is found in Brazil.

• With 20,000 total members, the Yanomani tribe is the largest tribe in the Amazon Rainforest.

• Two-thirds of this population lives in Peru, but most of this population dwells not in the Amazon, but in the highlands.

• The tribes live off the land and grow different types of fruits and vegetables such as bananas, passion fruit, papayas, corn, manioc and beans and the popular “super fruit”, the acai berry.

• The number of indigenous people living in the Amazon Basin is poorly quantifi ed, but some 20 million people in 8 Amazon countries and the Department of French Guiana are classifi ed as “indigenous”.

• Cattle ranching accounts for roughly 70 percent of deforestation in the Amazon.

• Once there were as many as 10 million native people living in the Amazon rainforest. Today the number of native Amazonians is much smaller. Those who remain want one thing above all: to continue their traditional way of life. A Sustainable Way of Life Native people have lived in the rainforest for about 12,000 years.