The splendour of the Amazon rainforest and why we must protect it

The Amazon rainforest is often called the lungs of our planet. It absorbs and processes carbon dioxide and it produces a large portion of the oxygen that keeps animals and humans alive all over the earth. The Amazon produces so much humidity and rainfall that the clouds above the rainforest are even referred as a river in the sky. A lot of the rain that falls on other areas of the planet originated here, because of these trees. The Amazon is a vast mix of jungle, wetland, and river systems that cover more than 7 million square kilometers. Although the majority of the Amazon basin lies within the borders of Brazil, the Amazon also stretches across Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela and other countries in South America. It represents more than half of our remaining rainforest, with more than 390 billion trees, comprised of 16,000 different species. An astonishing one in ten of the known species in the world lives in the Amazon rainforest.