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Quotes about Tropical Forests from the world's top natural health / natural living authors

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"Then a drier belt inland between the coast and the tropical forests of the Amazon Basin. When the droughts arrive, they hit hardest in the poverty-ridden semi-arid zone, which receives between 300 and 800 millimeters of rain a year. Brazilian scientists call this the "drought polygon"—a low Southern Oscillation Index and ENSO conditions often coinciding with low rainfall years. In 1983, 88 percent of the Nordeste suffered from severe drought. Agricultural production declined by 16 percent, and fourteen million people were affected by the dry conditions." - Brian Fagan, Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations (Get the book.) "The exceptionally intense El Nino of 1982-1983 ravaged tropical forests in Borneo and brought floods to southern China and drought to Australia. Peruvian fish meal was so scarce that American farmers planted more soy as chicken feed. A poor harvest in the parched Philippines raised prices for coconut oil, soaps, and detergents. Renewed drought brought famine to the Sahel, and thousands of southern African farmers starved. Meanwhile, Californians watched expensive houses slide down waterlogged hillsides. In Peru the small coastal fishing villages of a century ago are now cities." - Brian Fagan, Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations (Get the book.) "It dried out the tropical forests of the Kalimantan region of eastern Borneo, which usually received more than 2,500 millimeters of rainfall annually. The dry conditions caused evergreen trees to shed. Dry litter accumulated on the forest floor. Between August 1982 and May 1983, oven-hot winds fanned huge forest fires ignited by farmers burning off their land. Rising population densities caused by accelerated settlement programs and migration had created insatiable demand for new farming tracts. Inevitably, the farmers' fires burned out of control and moved into virgin forest." - Brian Fagan, Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations (Get the book.)

"Botanical name: Gymnema sylvestre Parts used and where grown Gymnema sylvestre is a woody climbing plant that grows in the tropical forests of central and southern India. The leaves are used in herbal medicine preparations. G. sylvestre is known as "periploca of the woods" in English and meshasringi (meaning "ram's horn") in Sanskrit. The leaves, when chewed, interfere with the ability to taste sweetness, which explains the Hindi name gurmar—"destroyer of sugar." - Alan R. Gaby, M.D., Jonathan V. Wright, M.D., Forrest Batz, Pharm.D. Rick Chester, RPh., N.D., DipLAc. George Constantine, R.Ph., Ph.D. Linnea D. Thompson, Pharm.D., N.D., The Natural Pharmacy: Complete A-Z Reference to Natural Treatments for Common Health Conditions (Get the book.)

"For the most part savannah and thorn scrub, it is a climatic transition zone between the hyper-arid Sahara to the north and the lush tropical forests which grow nearer to the equator in the south. Intermittent rains mean that nomadic cattle herding has long been a dominant way of life, with people wandering far and wide through the seasons in search of grazing for their livestock. It is often assumed that global warming will further desiccate the Sahel, allowing the Saharan dunes to march south into Nigeria and Ghana, and displacing millions in the process." - Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (Get the book.) "A massive programme of reforestation, combined with an end to the clear-cutting of tropical forests, might also deliver a wedge of carbon emissions reductions. All of these approaches have their pros and cons, of course. Probably the most controversial is nuclear power, which raises dangers of nuclear weapons proliferation and deadly accidents, as well as the still unsolved question of what to do with highly radioactive wastes." - Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (Get the book.) "We need to stop the destruction of tropical forests, and we need to dramatically increase tree cover elsewhere. And we need to make a difficult choice between injecting billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide underground and investing in 1,400 new gas power plants to produce electricity. All this, and we can hope to stabilise emissions in 2055 at today's levels, breaking the continual upward growth of a 'business as usual' path. But this still leaves us with a problem." - Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (Get the book.)

"Such vast tracts of land could be found only in tropical forests and subtropical grasslands—like the Amazon and the Sahel. Experience shows that farming such marginal lands will produce an initial return until the land quickly becomes degraded, and then abandoned—if the population has somewhere to go. Look out the plane window on a flight from New Orleans to Chicago, or Denver to Cincinnati. Everything you see is already in agricultural production. This huge expanse of naturally fertile ground literally feeds the world." - David R. Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations (Get the book.) "About the only places left that could be used for agriculture are the tropical forests where thin, highly erodible soils could only briefly support farming. Because we are already farming about as much of the planet as can be done sustainably, the potential for global warming to affect agricultural systems is alarming. The direcr effecrs of rising temperatures are worrisome enough." - David R. Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations (Get the book.)

"These plantations have been responsible for disastrous clear-cutting of the fast-declining natural tropical forests, destroying the habitat of rare species like the orangutan and causing major additional carbon releases through the burning of wood and underlying peat. In bad burning years, these Asian forest fires are the greatest single cause of greenhouse gas emissions apart from fossil fuel use." - Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (Get the book.)

"Almost certainly the precocity of Olmec civilization was a response to the immense fertility of the natural levee lands which border the sluggish rivers meandering through this landscape of tropical forests and grassy savannahs. The Olmecs were prodigious constructors of massive ceremonial centers made up of earth-and-clay mounds and pyramids; scattered throughout these centers have been found awesome figures of their gods and their rulers, carved from hard basalt laboriously brought in from great distances." - Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe, The True History of Chocolate (Get the book.)

"Range and Appearance Gymnema is a woody climbing plant native to the tropical forests of southern and central India, eastern Asia, Australia, and western and southern Africa. It prefers loamy, sandy soil. Its leaves are long, slender, and opposite. The creamy white to beige fruits are roundish and become thinner toward the ends, with one ending in a corkscrew. HAWTHORN Botanical Name Crataegus spp. Family Rosaceae (Rose Family) Etymology The genus name Crataegus derives from the Greek kratos, "hard," referring to hardness of the wood." - Brigitte Mars, A.H.G., The Desktop Guide to Herbal Medicine: The Ultimate Multidisciplinary Reference to the Amazing Realm of Healing Plants, in a Quick-study, One-stop Guide (Get the book.)

"Pimm and Clinton Jenkins, conservation, ecology, and extinction investigators from the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University, wrote that the world's three remaining tropical forests and twenty-five "hot spots" harbor "most of the world's species of plants and animals."44 Indeed, more than half the animal species in the world live in rain forests.45 Only a single square mile of Amazon rain forest is home to up to fifteen hundred species of butterfly." - David Steinman, Safe Trip to Eden: Ten Steps to Save Planet Earth from the Global Warming Meltdown (Get the book.)

"Mmmufmetur*d for ymn hy AMERICAN BEAUTY DUSTER Illinois and was fortunate to do research in the tropical forests of Peru and to live with forest farmers. D. D. T. DUSTS Do best work when applied with an American Beauty Duster. Fine cloud, smooth feed, perfect penetration, lots of power and long life ?that's an American Beauty. Priced at $25.00 USE LACCO BRAND DUSTS WRITE FOR FREE CHARTS Los Angeles Chemical Co. I960 Santa Fc Ave. Los Angeles 21, Calif. Manufacturing Plant, Sonthgate, Calif. LACCO DDT dust and duster ad. From California Cultivator. April 13, 1946." - Will Allen, The War on Bugs (Get the book.) "The theory behind Operation Ranch Hand was that guerilla warfare would be impossible without cover, so it was decided to turn Vietnam's tropical forests into a desert. At the same time, farmland spraying destroyed food crops, making life impossible for the peasants and striking at the root of national resistance. The only animals which survived in large numbers were rodents—and they caused sudden disease epidemics. In sublethal quantities, Dioxin can result in birth defects, genetic damage and cancers." - Will Allen, The War on Bugs (Get the book.)

"Gymnema sylvestre, a woody climber from the tropical forests of India, has been shown to repair/revitalize/regenerate the pancreas. In one study, Streptozotocin was used to induce diabetes in rats. Gymnema-treated rats had increased insulin secretion and beta cell number.There was no effect on normal rats. Rabbits induced with diabetes with Alloxan showed the same results. In tests in humans with both Type I and Type II diabetes, Gymnema was shown to be effective." - Robert Redfern, The Miracle Enzyme Is Serrapeptase (Get the book.)

"Before fifteen thousand years ago, the ability of the world's environments to support animals and people still exceeded the needs of the human population. But late-Ice Age people had developed increasingly efficient ways of exploiting food resources of every kind. Now their numbers rose much faster, especially in food-rich areas. They, and their ancestors, had an encyclopedic knowledge of plant foods. I once showed a !Kung man a collection of five-thousand-year-old seeds from an ancient camp in central Africa. He not only identified every one but knew the food and medicinal value of each." - Brian Fagan, Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations (Get the book.)

"In Africa, the tropical forests of the mountain gorilla are being cut and cleared for cooking wood. Similar tragedies are happening on nearly every continent. In third world countries, the cooking of food exposes people to the hazards of inhaling wood smoke or emissions from biomass fuels, such as cattle chips (dung). Emissions from wood and biomass fuels are major sources of air pollution in the home and are the number one source of air pollution outside the home (even eclipsing fossil fuels)." - David Wolfe, The Sunfood Diet Success System (Get the book.)

"People in tropical forests around the world have used the plants growing in their backyards as part of their healthcare systems for millennia. In fact, archaeologists have discovered the remains of plants used as medicine at archaeological dig sites in Latin and South America dating back to 8000 B.C. In the northwestern Amazon alone, at least 1,300 plant species are used to create drogas do certao or "wilderness drugs" for the primary health care needs in the region today. Many of these plant-based remedies have never been subjected to any type of scientific research." - Leslie Taylor, ND, The Healing Power of Rainforest Herbs: A Guide to Understanding and Using Herbal Medicinals (Get the book.)

"The clearing of tropical forests increases C02 emissions from industrial hazards; disrupting the biosphere control by elements of life. IONS When a molecule loses an electron it becomes a discharged stable Positive ion (norm 40%) that has unhealthy effects universally on living tissues. When a molecule gains an electron it becomes a charged Negative ion (norm 60%) that can be inhaled, with measurable beneficial effects on livingtissues and Immunoglobulin-A. Negative ions are normally 1000-2000 per cc. of air over open land, and are produced by lightening and waterfalls (50,000 cc." - Joseph E. Mario, Anti-Aging Manual: The Encyclopedia of Natural Health (Get the book.)

"In the tropics, governments own or control nearly 80 percent of tropical forests, so these forests stand or fall according to government policy; and in many countries, government policies lie behind the wastage of forest resources. Besides the tax incentives and credit subsidies that guarantee large profits to private investors who convert forests to pastures and farms, governments allow private concessionaires to log the national forests on terms that induce uneconomic or wasteful uses of the public domain." - Leslie Taylor, ND, The Healing Power of Rainforest Herbs: A Guide to Understanding and Using Herbal Medicinals (Get the book.) "THE BIODIVERSITY OF THE RAINFOREST Why should the loss of tropical forests be of any concern to us in light of our own poor management of natural resources? The loss of tropical rainforests has a profound and devastating impact on the world because rainforests are so biologically diverse, more so than other ecosystems (e.g., temperate forests) on Earth. Consider these facts: • A single pond in Brazil can sustain a greater variety of fish than is found in all of Europe's rivers." - Leslie Taylor, ND, The Healing Power of Rainforest Herbs: A Guide to Understanding and Using Herbal Medicinals (Get the book.)

"Some figs are parasires that strangle and kill their hosts; others grow on low trailing shrubs in the desert or on tall trees in tropical forests. There are large figs and small figs, round figs and ovoid figs, spring figs, summer figs, and winter figs, and figs colored black, brown, red, purple, violet, green, yellow-green, yellow, and white. The cultivation of figs goes back to the very earliest times. Drawings of figs dating back several centuries before Christ were found in the Gizeh pyramid." - Dianne Onstad, Whole Foods Companion: A Guide For Adventurous Cooks, Curious Shoppers, and lovers of natural foods (Get the book.)

"But despite the levels of deforestation, up to 60 percent of their territory is still covered by natural tropical forests. In fact, today, much of the pressures on their remaining rainforests come from servicing the needs and markets for wood products in industrialized countries that have already depleted their own natural resources." - Leslie Taylor, ND, The Healing Power of Rainforest Herbs: A Guide to Understanding and Using Herbal Medicinals (Get the book.)

"Una de gato þ Garabato *:• Paraguayo þ Saventaro þ Garabato þ Life-giving Vine of Peru þ Hawks claw15 Medicinal Forms þ Dried Bark and Root (capsules, tablets and teas) þ Tinctures Description Members of the genus Uncaria are found throughout tropical forests in Asia, Africa, South America and Central America.6 The common name, cat's claw, comes from the curved thorns or 'hooks' used by the plant to fasten itself onto supporting plants.2 The species found in South America are woody climbing vines, growing up to 100 feet or 30 meters." - Heather Boon, BScPhm, PhD and Michael Smith, BPharm, MRPharmS, ND, The Natural Medicine Guide to the 50 Most Common Medicinal Herbs (Get the book.)

"Distribution The tree occurs in the tropical forests of Nigeria and Cameroon and in the Congo (Hutchinson and Dalziel 1963,112). Cultivation The plant can be propagated either from seeds or from cuttings. Details, however, are lacking. Appearance This evergreen tree, which can grow to a height of 30 meters, somewhat resembles an oak. It has oval, attenuated leaves (7 to 13 cm long) and bushy inflorescences and produces winged seeds. The light or gray-brown bark is 4 to 8 mm thick with both longitudinal and transverse fissures and is usually heavily overgrown with lichens." - Christian Ratsch, The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants: Ethnopharmacology and Its Applications (Get the book.)

"Humanity was still in the process of evolving to the ancestor of modern humans (Homo sapiens) amidst African tropical forests, and was fully embedded in an elaborate and self-regulating ecological system. Disease and humans (like disease and all animals) had an equilibrium ?a compromised state of coexistence. This status quo extended all the way into the dim and remote past —until one day "some ingenious character" decided to walk out of the forest and venture into the more temperate North, leaving behind many of the bugs ?pathogenic microorganisms ?in his or her old food chain." - APC Books, Healing Our Planet, Healing Our Selves: The Power of change Within to Change the World (Get the book.)

"This species-area relationship has prompted some biologists to place great emphasis on determining the optimal sizes and shapes of nature reserves and national parks in tropical forests. Parks and reserves should be designed so as to protect the largest numbers of species, and if random extinctions could be lessened by taking into account sound biological principles, we would all be better off. No one can argue with this. But the conservation of tropical forests is as much a biological problem as it is a political and economic problem." - Adrian Forsyth and Kenneth Miyata, Tropical Nature: Life and Death in the Rain Forests of Central and South America (Get the book.)

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