The Amazon River has the world's largest drainage area supported a huge tropical rainforest.
Everyone has a prejudice. A liner trip on the Amazon river was that for me. I chose no cabin but a hammock on a deck without hesitation because it seemed more comfortable, and the tariff for a passenger who slept in a hammock on the deck was cheaper than that in a small closed cabin. However, the temperature dropped in the middle of the night. The wind, which passed through the forest and river, took a body temperature due to the heat of vaporization. I shivered with cold. I could not sleep even with all my clothes, so I had to take a nap to make up for lack of sleep. I realized the tropical rainforest as an environmental device of the earth.
Iquitos, the central city of the Peruvian Amazon, is the largest city in the world that they cannot reach by land. It attracts tourists as a departure point for tours to rainforest camps. One of such camps that I visited was an hour's boat ride up a tributary river from the port of Iquitos. When going for a while from the port, villages occasionally appeared on waterside. As for the rest, there were only forests and rivers, except for boats carrying locals.
The tropical rainforest seen up close was dense and large, but it was not an overwhelming mass. Although it looked rich, it was a thin flora that, once widely cut down, did not easily grow back under the harsh sun. Grassland, where trees had been cut down to avoid malaria mosquitoes, surrounded either the camp or the houses of the indigenous people, but there was no sign of returning to the forest. A tropical rainforest was a weak forest where diverse trees and plants supported each other.
The camp staff was a former teacher who came there after having been arrested for campaigning to protect the rainforest. Although each part of the rainforest was fragile, the total area had a boundless expanse. So I agree with activities to protect a tropical rainforest that had a global impact. However, it seems to be a bit arrogant to blame the past developments in other regions on the Amazon river area in the present time. For example, the Iberian Peninsula, which forests covered once, has become arid due to agricultural development. Perhaps, protection for tropical rainforests should be considered together with the afforestation of arable and habitable land in developed countries.
Click here for your impressions
reference
Wikipedia
Please do not use or upload our photos without permission.
