Deforestation In The Amazon Basin

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The Amazon is the largest tropical forest in the world. It is 2.124 million sq miles. The Amazon basin covers eight countries and cattle ranching is ruining the forest. Find out how cattle ranchers are ruining the forest and how it can be changed, read this article and be blown away! The majority of deforestation is in the amazon basin. Most of the deforestation is caused by cattle ranchers cutting and burning down trees and nature for pasture. 65-70% of deforested areas in Brazil are now used for pasture. Cattle have low maintenance costs in latin america. Large areas of rainforests are cleared and used for cattle grazing in latin america for land purposes. Land clearing for cattle pasture remains a popular activity for land speculators. …show more content…
However, due to economic setbacks and political changes in brazil, only 6,000 families moved to the Amazon Basin. The focus had shifted from moving people to increasing cattle production. 5 million cattle were moved into the area instead. Most of the deforestation is from farmers who cut down trees to produce crops for their families and local consumption. But in the later part of 20th century that began to change. With a large amount of deforestation driven by industrial activities and large scale agriculture. By the 2000s more than three-quarters of the forest clearing in the Amazon was for cattle ranching. Forests in the Amazon were cleared faster than ever before in the late 1970s through the mid 2000s. large areas of the rainforest were felled for cattle pasture and other industrial activities like soy farms, drowned for dams, dug up for minerals, and bulldozed for towns. Cattle ranchers are not the only ones taking the forest. The ranchers are going to take more and more of the rainforest to raise cows for meat production. The ranchers make more money for export and import for beef. Ranchers only care about money and don’t really care about what they're doing to the rainforests. If ranchers keep cutting down forests they will take the world down with them. Without rainforests there would be no water cycle. Rainforests gives us fresh air from rain, so if there is no rainforests we cannot breathe. The Amazon alone holds 20% of the world's oxygen. Cattle ranching is the biggest threat to the rainforests. Each cow has almost the size of a football field to graze. They leave some trees and bushes for shade. Brazil is the biggest meat exporter, so that's why they take so much land to keep up the demand. But they don't have any intention to stop. The Brazilian government is trying to find values in the forest so the cattle ranchers will

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