The Amazon rainforest is one of the earth’s last frontiers covering an area almost the size of the continental United States and threatened by the advance of civilization. For centuries the Amazon rainforest has been invaded to explore its natural resources, felling and burning trees to grow crops and raise cattle, its rivers polluted and its people denied their rights.  The Amazon’s future is one of the great issues facing the world today.
The first settlers were Native American peoples who lived in the region before the Europeans conquered South America. …

Ever since the Europeans came to the Amazon basin its natural resources have been exploded. The first European settlers grew crops and traded them. The first economic exploitation of the region came in the 1890′s with the increased worldwide demand for rubber. made people come to the Amazon region and many made a fortune but suddenly in 1920 it all ended, the seeds have been taken to the Far East where the rubber was easier and cheaper to collect and to transport.
Trade and industry in the Amazon has been …

The Amazon River is the second longest river in the world about 4,000 miles or 6,450 km long, second only to the Nile River. In terms of volume, the Amazon is the largest river in the world, it contains one fifth of the earth’s fresh water. Its width varies according to the rain season; at its widest point it can be 6.8 miles or 11km during the dry season and 24.8 miles or 40km during the rainy season. Where the river meets the Atlantic Ocean its width reaches 150 miles …

The Amazon river is home to many species of animals and many of them are in danger of extinction. For the last 20 years the governments of Peru and Brazil along with conservation organizations, local businesses and have been working together to protect endangered species for the enjoyment of the world and future generations.
One of the most endangered species in the is the pink dolphin or bufeo thought to be extinct more than twenty years ago. They are very rarely seen and are found only in the …

From the 1890s to the 1920s rubber from the was in high demand, it was used to produce tires for automobiles, waterproof shoes and clothes.

Rubber tree
.
Foreign companies settled in the city of Iquitos, Peru from where they controlled the extraction of rubber. In 1851 Iquitos had a population of 200 and by 1900 its population reached 20,000. In the 1860s, approximately 3,000 tons of rubber was being exported annually and by 1911 annual exports had grown to 44,000 tons, representing 9.3% of Peru’s exports.
Thousands of worked as …

Indians living in the forest were less affected by the Spanish conquerors than the Andean Indians. Spanish missionaries reached the area later in the eighteenth century but the real clash with the western civilization came in the late nineteenth century when the English found rubber in the forest creating the rubber boom. Foreign companies employed local forest Indians to extract the rubber under very harsh conditions. Foreign workers brought with them diseases such as pneumonia and flu for which locals had no immunity and as a consequence thousands of them …

Theobroma cacao is a tree fruit endemic to the South American rainforest and distributed to Central America by humans. It was domesticated about 3,000 years ago by local indigenous people in the and in the Lacandon area in Mexico; the domestication of this crop happened independently of each other. Although not exclusively indigenous of Peru, the tree is native of the Amazon basin and it is found growing in the wild at low elevations in the foothills of the .

Flowers from the Theobroma cacao tree
.
The name Theobroma means “food …

In 2007, Pure Nacional, a variety of the cacao tree was rediscovered in Peru, to the world’s chocolate makers it was a delight. In 1916 the plant was hit by disease and within a few years 100% of the trees were destroyed and the Pure Nacional species of cacao tree was put in the list of extinct species. The cacao tree is highly susceptible to diseases and insect pests.

Chocolate from Pure Nacional Cacao
.

Pure Nacional was found growing in the valley of the Marañon Canyon which flows north along the eastern …