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CNN’s Planet in Peril

The Amazon rainforest is so vast and full of life that even its defenders don't know exactly what it is they are protecting. In the past 40 years, roughly 20 percent of the Amazon rainforest has been wiped out.

"The wealth of biodiversity is so immense, we cannot even estimate the amount we don't know," says Cláudio C. Maretti, Brazil-based director for conservation for the World Wildlife Fund. "Every new expedition you do to the Amazon, you might find one new species of fish. Every other, you might find some new bird or frog." The Amazon rainforest, which encompasses an area nearly as large as the continental United States and stretches across nine countries, is considered the world's richest and most varied natural habitat, with several million species

of insects, plants, birds and fish calling it home. It also plays an important role in regulating Earth's temperature as its dense vegetation absorbs carbon dioxide and releases oxygen into the air.

But the Amazon has been under pressure from outside forces for decades. In the past 40 years, roughly 20 percent of the rainforest has been wiped out. Maretti says an additional 17 percent has been degraded to varying degrees.

"We have been deforesting at enormous rates," Maretti says. The chief drivers of this deforestation are large-scale business interests involved in logging, mining, agriculture and, especially, cattle ranching. Some of this activity is sanctioned by the government; much of it is not. Greenpeace estimates as much as 80 percent of the logging is illegal.

The Amazon rainforest is just one of many habitats around the world threatened by encroaching development or natural resource extraction. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations estimates that 50,000 square miles of forest -- more than three times the size of Switzerland -- are lost each year because of clearing and degradation.

The threat is particularly acute in the more tropical areas of South America, Africa and Southeast Asia. Cambodia, for example, lost nearly 30 percent of its primary forests from 2000 to 2005, according to FAO. Vietnam lost close to 55 percent of its primary forests, FAO found. And Nigeria lost nearly 56 percent of its primary forests over the same period, the worst rate of forest loss in the world, according to FAO.

The destruction of the Earth's oldest and richest forests is not a new phenomenon, but the rate of destruction has increased in recent decades.

"Worldwide, one-half of all forests we've lost in the last 10,000 years has occurred in the last 80 years. Half of that was destroyed in the last 30 years," says Scott Paul, Forest Campaign Coordinator for Greenpeace.

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