UWC Grade 5 (2009-2010)

Hang onto old pieces of junk mail. While you can't stop companies from wasting trees to produce ads that nobody reads, you can still put the paper to good use. Use old envelopes from credit card offers to take phone messages or make "to do" lists.

The world's rainforests are among our most precious natural resources. Many rare species of plants and animals live in the rainforests. As modern civilization continues to progress, an increasing percentage of the world's rainforests are cleared for commercial purposes. Thankfully, there are many easy things you can do to help conserve the rainforest.

The forests and rivers of the Amazon harbor more species of reptiles than anywhere else on earth

Respecting and ExtendingOur Wood Resource Today's near-zero-waste sawmills use computers and sophisticated equipment such as laser-guided saws to get the most lumber out of each log. In fact, today's mill recover about twice as much lumber from each log as did mills at the turn of the century. The wood fiber that is not usable as lumber is recovered and processed into other valuable products. These "by-products" of lumber manufacturing can become particleboard , oriented strandboard paneling, or other engineered-wood products. Byproducts are also used to fuel cogeneration plants which produce electricity for the sawmills. And wood fiber also is used to make such products as plastic filler, shoe polish, toothpaste, varnish, foam rubber, and much more!

In 2006, the number of endangered species rose to more than 16,000 worldwide. Habitat loss, pollution and human-animal conflict all play a part when species are threatened with extinction. Introductions of non-native species devastate local native populations and alter ecosystems. From elephants, leopards and bears to monk seals, sea turtles, manatees and whales we'll explore wildlife conservation issues and find some reasons to be encouraged. With new species being discovered every day, interest in protecting some of the world's unique habitats is growing.

There are around 800 species, of which the largest group is bats. In fact, there are more species of bats in the Amazon than anywhere else.

Captured and killed in Florida, juvenile Burmese pythons (left), a young African rock python (center), and a larger African rock python lay coiled on a tray in a Unversity of Florida laboratory in late August 2009.

Elephants are the largest land animals. They can weigh over 6,000 kg, or more than the weight of four cars! The one feature that makes an elephant unmistakable is its long trunk. A trunk is an elephant's best tool for sucking up water, digging, grabbing, lifting, sniffing, and breathing. The trunk even has a fingerlike tip that can flick dirt from an elephant’s eye or pick up a single blade of grass. There are three species of elephants. Two species live in Africa and one lives in Asia. All three species are endangered.

Asian elephants have an arched body shape. They have triangular ears that do not reach their shoulders and two bumps on their foreheads. Their trunks have a single lip on the upper tip of the trunk. Male Asian elephants are 2-3.5 m tall. Their average weight is about 5,400 kg. Females average about 2.35 m tall and weigh about 2,700 kg. Often, only males have tusk

Elephants live in social groups called herds. Herds usually have about 10 to 20 members. Sometimes many herds will meet and form “super herds” of 100 or more elephants. Herds consist mainly of females that are related to each other. A typical herd might include mothers, daughters, aunts, and grandmothers, and a few young males. The oldest female is the herd’s matriarch. She leads the herd to water and finds food and a place to rest. There are also smaller bachelor herds that are made up of adult males.

The Ocelot is mostly nocturnal and very territorial. It will fight fiercely, sometimes to the death, in territorial disputes. In addition, the Ocelot marks its territory with especially pungent urine. Like most felines, it is solitary, usually meeting only to mate

The colorful, giant bill, which in some large species measure more than half the length of the body

Arapaima, Paiche or Pirarucu is one of the 500 species of catfish inhabiting the Amazon rainforest. The largest scale fish in the Amazonia. World's largest freshwater fish. An air-breathing, carnivorous fish that can grow up to 10 feet long and can weigh up to 400 pounds. One individual can yield 70 kg of meat. Pirarucu ranks among the most ancient fish on earth - Jurassic period, 200 million years back. Its name comes from Tupi language which means something like "red fish".

The harpy eagle nests in the tallest trees and hunts birds, monkeys, and sloths. Swinging through the lower branches, the grey woolly monkey uses its tail to grip. But this is gradually being destroyed. The Amazon Basin once dense, is now rapidly being opened up. The land is being developed for oil, mining, and farming.

Sun > Strangler Fig > Howler > Harpy Eagle > DecomposersSun > Stranger Fig > Howler > Crocodile > DecomposersSun > Strangler Fig > Ant > Lizard > Harpy Eagle > DecomposersSun > Strangler Fig > Wasp > Spider > Bird > Harpy Eagle > DecomposersSun > Strangler Fig > Caterpillar > Lizard > Harpy EagleSun > Strangler Fig > Ant > Spider > Frog > Human Being (eats the monkey shot with an arrow poisoned with frog toxin) > DecomposersSun > Strangler Fig > Fungus > Ant > Frog > Snake > Harpy Eagle > DecomposersSun > Strangler Fig > Fungus > Ant > Ant Eater > Harpy Eagle > DecomposersSun > Strangler Fig > Bat > Snake > Harpy Eagle > DecomposersSun > Strangler Fig > Bat > Owl > DecomposersSun > Strangler Fig > Bat > Possum > Margay > Harpy Eagle > DecomposersSun > Algae > Mosquito Larva > Tadpole > Howler Monkey > Jaguar > DecomposersSun > Plants/Mud > Caterpillar/Blue Morpho Butterfly > Crocodile Hatchling > Coatimundi > Crocodile > Human Being > DecomposersSun > Strangler Fig > Ant > Spider > Lizard > Crocodile Hatchling > Coatimundi > Human Being

Tropical rainforests are the most diverse ecosystems on earth. A four-square mile patch of rainforest contains as many as 1500 species of flowering plants, 750 species of trees, 125 species of mammals, 400 species of birds, 100 species of reptiles, 60 species of amphibians, and 150 species of butterflies. More than 50% of the world's plant and animal species inhabit the 7% of the world that is covered in rainforest.

Some forests in Southeast Asia have been around for more than 100 million years, when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth. During the Ice Ages, the last of which occurred about 10,000 years ago, the frozen areas of the North and South Poles spread over much of the earth, causing huge numbers of extinctions.

While there are many species of plants in a square-mile of tropical rainforest, there may only be one or two of each. In addition as most of the species are found nowhere else on Earth, by removing one plant or animal, the fragile ecosystem would be threatened, and the species may be forced into extinction.

Many of these forests may be too damaged to fully recover," warns one of the researchers, Lisa Curran of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, United States. "They are so degraded that the ecological processes of regeneration will be so slow as to be essentially nonexistent." Indonesia contains 10 per cent of the world's tropical rainforest, and it is disappearing even faster than the Brazilian Amazon. Scientists are now calling for action both in Indonesia and abroad to save Borneo's forests, which they say are critical in maintaining the island's biodiversity and sustaining rural livelihoods.

rainforests continue to be destroyed at a pace exceeding 80,000 acres (32,000 hectares) per day.

World rainforest cover now stands at around 2.5 million square miles (6 million square kilometers), an area about the size of the contiguous 48 United States or Australia and representing around 5 percent of the world's land surface. Much of this remaining area has been impacted by human activities and no longer retains its full original biodiversity

A government agreement on the oil palm plan was signed during a visit to Beijing by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia in July of last year. But an Indonesian Forestry Ministry spokesman said last month that the government now proposed to steer Chinese oil palm investment toward 400,000 hectares of agricultural land instead.The government had never intended to destroy more rain forest, the spokesman said in a telephone interview from Jakarta, adding that no official agreement had yet been signed with Chinese business interests."The Indonesian Government seems to be supportive of the Heart of Borneo project and generally more concerned about facing up to its environmental challenges," said Douglas Sheil, a scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research in Bogor, Indonesia

WWF-Malaysia has said that the forests are one of two places in the world where endangered orangutans, Bornean pygmy elephants and the critically endangered Sumatran rhinoceros still coexist. In June, a motion- triggered camera there photographed for the first time a wild rhino, believed to be one of only 13 whose existence was confirmed by a field survey last year.