LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Rainforest: Forests
built 606 days ago
Only covering about 0.2 percent of the Earth's land surface, the type of ancient coastal temperate rainforest found around the Clayoquot Sound is truly special. Including rivers, lakes, a rainforest, marine areas and beaches, a visit to Clayoquot Sound provides the opportunity to explore a rare type of forest. For a unique perspective of this landscape, take to the sea by boat or kayak. Paddling the waters around Clayoquot Sound, travelers can discover hidden lagoons and isolated sand beaches. Run-ins with local marine animals such as seals, porpoises, Grey whales and otters are often a regular occurrence. If staying dry is more your style, explore Clayoquot Sound via one of many hiking trails.
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Directly and indirectly, the leading threats to rainforest ecosystems are governments and their unbridled, unplanned, and uncoordinated development of natural resources. The 2000-2001 World Resources Report put out by the United Nations reported that governments worldwide spend $700 billion dollars a year supporting and subsidizing environmentally unsound practices in the use of water, agriculture, energy, and transportation. In the Amazon, rainforest timber exports and large-scale development projects go a long way in servicing national debt in many developing countries, which is why governments and international aid-lending institutions like the World Bank subsidize them. In the tropics, governments own or control nearly 80 percent of tropical forests, so these forests stand or fall according to government policy; and in many countries, government policies lie behind the wastage of forest resources. Besides the tax incentives and credit subsidies that guarantee large profits to private investors who convert forests to pastures and farms, governments allow private concessionaires to log the national forests on terms that induce uneconomic or wasteful uses of the public domain. Massive public expenditures on highways, dams, plantations, and agricultural settlements, too often supported by multilateral development lending, convert or destroy large areas of forest for projects of questionable economic worth.
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A rainforest is a forested area with a distinctive animal and plant life, as well as plenty of annual rainfall. The minimum annual rainfall needed to define a rainforest is between 67 and 100 inches of rain per year (how much rain necessary differs between sources and locations). Rainforests are found in both tropical and temperate climates.
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You are fighting to preserve a section of the rainforest which is scheduled to be destroyed. You know that somewhere in this portion of jungle lies the cure for the dreaded disease "wanderingeyeballitis" . Students everywhere are counting on you to determine which plant in this area holds the cure. You must find a way to stop the developers from destroying the forest so that you can develop the cure. Your job is to argue for the saving of the land.
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Representing the Wet Tropics rainforest environments where native species such as the Southern Cassowary, Boyd’s Forest Dragon and colourful Eclectus parrots can be viewed in a natural setting. Boardwalks meander along the forest floor to the rainforest canopy.
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It has taken centuries for St Lucia's tropical island rainforest to become its current well-developed refuge. Nonetheless, two thousand years ago, Arawak tribes associated the dark woods with evil spirits and for centuries the forest remained untouched and the spirits the Amerindians feared evolved into island folklore.
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