7 Reasons Why I Am Vegan: 4. For The Rainforest

Vittoria
Jan 5, 2018
3 min read

Welcome to my series 7 Reasons Why I Am Vegan (and so could you)! In honour of Veganuary I will publish everyday on the first week of January 2018 from Monday 1st to Friday 7th, and by the end of the week I will explore all the motives that compelled me to choose this lifestyle. As I mentioned before, I believe in the power of information and even if you feel like this is not for you, you might end up discovering something you didn’t know and make a more informed choice going forward.

The fourth reason why I am vegan might be something that not many people link with this lifestyle, and it's for the Rainforest! That's right, animal agriculture is not only responsible for the killing of innocents, waste of water and food, but

also for the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. In fact, 1-2 acres of Rainforest are cleared every second and a total of 91% of Amazon destruction is caused by livestock and feed crops.

Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6% and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years" If that doesn’t shock you think that up to 137 plant, animal and insect species are lost every day due to its destruction! That equates to 50,000 species a year. And as those species disappear, so do many cures for life-threatening diseases: “Currently, 121 prescription drugs sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. While 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less than 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.” We are not only loosing incredible species but also invaluable knowledge, this is because most shamans remaining in those lands today are in their 70s and each time one of them dies it is as if a library has been burned down. We might never know what treasures grew within the forest and that is an enormous waste.

The Rainforest does more than just providing incredible resources, it also accounts for more than 20 percent of the world oxygen production, so we are literally killing the lungs of our planet all for the sake of profit. Many people are trying to stand up to stop this sacrilege, 1100 land activists have lost their lives in Brazil alone in the past 20 years in this attempt.

If you want to do something today please stop buying foods containing animal products, buy sustainable coffee, and avoid palm oil at all costs as 26 million acres (10.8 m hectares) have been cleared for palm oil production alone.

Here are also some resources to give you ideas of how to further your efforts:

How To Save Tropical Rainforests

10 Things To Do To Save The Rainforest

I discovered a company called Ecosia, it is a search engine devoted to plant trees with their profits. They plant a tree every 7 seconds, with over 7 million trees already planted thanks to 5.5 million active users using their site (You can also get an app for your iPhone or android).

By simply going vegan you can save 900 Sq.ft of Rainforest a month and 10,950 Sq.ft a year.