The Amazon rainforest consists of about 1.4 billion acres of forest, and is home to millions of different species. Many animals that this region supports are endangered and some plants have important medicinal uses. Every year a huge area is burned or cut down for logging and gold mining and a large population of wildlife is killed or forced to move because their homes are destroyed. Slowly but surely, the great leafy amazon is being destroyed by mankind so they can take the natural resources like rubber from trees, food, various plant medicines and gold. These companies are too self-absorbed in selling product they don’t realize that it is harming the environment. The companies and government shouldn’t be able to use all of the resources from the rain forest.

Animals that live in the Amazon use the plants that grow there in many ways. Some use them to eat and many also use the green forest to camouflage in their surroundings. If companies and government take away more and more of these plants, the animals who have lived there will no longer have their main source of food or protection anymore. When that happens, the animals must leave in order to find somewhere else to survive. The plants that grow in the Amazon are useful for humans, but the species that live in the forest depend on them, so without the plants in the environment, they can't survive.

When companies are taking natural resources from the Amazon they are also depriving the native population from the things they depend on and which are vital to their lives. For example, in the late 1900s, a pharmaceutical company called Squibb took the venom of an Amazonian viper and used it as a medicine to help blood pressure. In 1991 the product earned $1.6 billion as their profit and the native people did not receive any trade for the secret they shared with them. The natives had been living on the land long before the discovery were aware of the venom’s power, but since the company exploited the resource, the tribes had a more difficult time getting the venom.

The Amazon is also home to a special tree that is used to make rubber. The problem with taking this useful resource is that the tree takes a very long time to grow back. It takes a few minutes to slit open the tree and have the gooey rubbery material start to leak out. Unfortunately once a rubber tree is cut open, it will never be able to continue growing and it will die. If people continue killing the trees they will become extinct.

Some may argue that if they mine gold, the economy will go up and gold is so valuable people really want it. That may be true and reasonable but not everyone really knows how they get this precious metal. When companies and the government dig up the ground to mine gold people have to separate the gold from the soil. To separate them illegal and legal miners use a highly toxic element called mercury. For each ounce of gold you own, you can guaranteed that somebody released 3 ounces of mercury into the atmosphere in order to obtain the precious metal. Since such large amounts of mercury are seeping into the soil, the water the indigenous people use is becoming contaminated.

Right this minute a machine probably either cut or burned down a tree. Not only is this tree going to die but any beings living in or on the tree will most likely die. While people are harmfully clearing land to mine for gold the precious medicines could be being destroyed. Some plants may have the ability to cure some of the devastating diseases known to man and enterprise has brought most of them almost to extinction. If companies maintain their pace in burning and cutting down giant parts of forest the helpful plants that can cure cancer will die out and there will be no cure anymore. People really need to stop destroying the amazon before it's too late.

In past history, the government and large companies have been able to do practically whatever they please to the Amazon which is affecting it negatively. If we continue using harmful processes to extract valuable resources from the Amazon, then the forest may never grow back to its original state.