1 of 2Why are rainforests so important?Rainforests are where the ancestors of humans first evolved—and where our closest living relatives still live.(more)See all videos for this article2 of 2Glimpse the Amazon Rainforest's diverse wildlife, from anacondas and sloths to macaws and capybarasLearn about wildlife of the Amazon Rainforest, including macaws, toucans, tyrant flycatchers, capybaras, tapirs, sloths, squirrel monkeys, red howler monkeys, jaguars, caimans, anacondas, tarantulas, leaf-cutter ants, scarlet ibis, and black skimmers.(more)See all videos for this articleThe Amazon Rainforest is the world’s richest and most-varied biological reservoir, containing several million of , , , and other forms of , many still unrecorded by . The luxuriant vegetation encompasses a wide variety of , including many species of , , , and , as well as , , and tree. Excellent timber is furnished by the and the Amazonian cedar. Major wildlife includes , , , , and many other types of , and several types of .1 of 2Learn how the Brazilian government incentivized forest clearing in the Amazon for beef production and ranchingDeforestation of the Amazon River basin has followed a pattern of cutting, burning, farming, and grazing. This process is then repeated on adjacent plots of land, steadily pushing back the borders of the Amazon Rainforest.(more)See all videos for this article2 of 2Behold the multitude of Amazonian arthropods including spiders, scorpions, beetles, and mantidsAmong the arthropods of the Amazon Rainforest are spiders (including orb weavers and tarantulas), scorpions, centipedes, millipedes, butterflies, wasps, rhinoceros beetles, ponerine ants, mantids, and walkingsticks.(more)See all videos for this articleIn the 20th century, rapidly growing population settled major areas of the Rainforest. The size of the Amazon forest shrank dramatically as a result of settlers’ clearance of the land to obtain lumber and to create grazing pastures and farmland. Brazil holds approximately 60 percent of the Amazon basin within its borders, and some 1,583,000 square miles (4,100,000 square km) of this was covered by forests in 1970. The amount of forest cover declined to some 1,283,000 square miles (3,323,000 square km) by 2016, about 81 percent of the area that had been covered by forests in 1970. In the 1990s the Brazilian government and various international bodies began efforts to protect parts of the forest from human encroachment, exploitation, , and other forms of destruction. Although Brazil’s Amazon continues to lose forest cover, the pace of this loss declined from roughly 0.4 percent per year during the 1980s and ’90s to roughly 0.1–0.2 percent per year between 2008 and 2016. However, some 75,000 fires occurred in the Brazilian Amazon during the first half of 2019 (an increase of 85 percent over 2018), largely due to encouragement from Brazilian Pres. , a strong proponent of tree clearing., The Amazon rainforest, [a] also called the Amazon jungle or Amazonia, is a moist broadleaf tropical rainforest in the Amazon biome that covers most of the Amazon basin of South America. This basin encompasses 7,000,000 km 2 (2,700,000 sq mi), [ 2 ] of which 6,000,000 km 2 (2,300,000 sq mi) are covered by the rainforest . [ 3 ], Amazon Rainforest, large tropical rainforest occupying the Amazon basin in northern South America and covering an area of 2,300,000 square miles (6,000,000 square km). It is the world’s richest and most-varied biological reservoir, containing several million species..