Rainforests matter to environmentalists for two main reasons: one, as more rainforest is cut down, that translates into the destruction of habitats for millions of species (some yet to be discovered) of plants, insects and animals, and two, rainforests have the ability to mitigate the greenhouse effect by working as a sink for carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere.

Almost 15 percent of the land on Earth was covered by tropical rain forest, but today more than half of that has been lost.

These forests that span three continents-from the Amazon Basin in South America, to Indonesia and Malaysia in Southeast Asia, as well as Papua New Guinea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Cameroon in Africa-are home to some 50 percent of the 1.8 million known species in the world. Some of these include rare and interesting animals such as the red howler monkey, the jaguar, and the world's largest rodent, the capybara. Scientists believe that there are still 10 to 100 million other species that remain as yet unclassified, including bacteria and fungi.

But the rainforests are currently competing with commercial and developer interests, as well as with global warming itself. As temperatures rise and the amount of carbon dioxide in the air has increased, the soil is becoming over-fertilized. Scientists have hypothesized that the growing number of large trees and small trees have therefore been competing more heavily for resources like sunlight, water and soil nutrients, resulting in an imbalance in the rainforest's plant diversity.

But global warming aside, the biggest threat to rainforests is the clearing of land by burning or clearcutting-the practice of cutting all the trees in one are that are of commercial value all at once, resulting in large amounts of waste, and erosion. Before 2006, land clearing was primarily for cattle ranching to produce cheap beef, but now the logging is a way to create arable land for farming soybean- and palm oil-producing crops.

What's the benefit of a rainforest other than protecting unknown and obscure species? The leaves of the rainforest's many trees, plants and understory vegetation absorb carbon dioxide from the air, converting the carbon into food, wood, and other biomass through a process called photosynthesis. However, when land is cleared of these plants, the carbon that has been sucked up is released right back into the atmosphere, contributing to the gases that make up the greenhouse effect. According to Cool Earth, deforestation will release as much CO2 into the atmosphere as 8 million people flying from London to New York.

Amazingly, deforestation accounts for almost 20 percent of all the greenhouse gases caused by humans, second only to creating energy through fossil fuel emissions. In fact, deforestation causes more greenhouse gas emissions than all car and air travel combined, worldwide!

If you're concerned about rainforests, make sure you buy tropical wood products that have a label indicating it is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, an international nonprofit that makes sure that wood is harvested sustainably, and promotes partnerships that benefit the environment. Also try and avoid buying products with a ton of soy and palm oil, but that can be difficult as both are ingredients of things as common as cookies, bread, and toothpaste. We recommend the Body Shop and Unilever, who are researching alternatives to these kinds of usages, as well as food stamped by the Rainforest Alliance.

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