I'm Kricket and I love the rainforest! I'm really worried because it's being destroyed. Lots of beautiful plants and animals and PEOPLE live in the Amazon forest and they are in danger. Millions of trees are being cut and even burned down. The logs are used for making houses, furniture and paper and many other things. The smoke contaminates the air, millions of birds, animals, reptiles and insects die, and ecosystems are destroyed!

Everyone on Earth depends on the forests because they make oxygen and oxygen is what we breathe. In Bolivia during the month of August when ranchers and farmers to the North begin to burn down the forest for lumber and farming, the smoke is carried for hundreds of miles South to my city, Santa Cruz. The air fills up with smoke and sometimes we can't even go to school because we can't go outside. Lots of people have trouble breathing and get infections in their throats and eyes. Air pollution makes people sick. Now imagine the plants and animals in the forest!

Here in Bolivia our part of the Amazon is home to thousands and thousands of plant and animal species. In fact, there are so many that Bolivia has been named one of the richest areas on Earth in plant and animal species. Scientists and other conservation workers can't even keep up! They keep discovering more and more new plants and animals and some of them live in ecosystems that are so endangered that they become extinct before scientists can even figure out what species they were!

Click here to see my photo galleries of beautiful Bolivian flowers and really amazing Bolivian wildlife or my page on interesting facts and trivia about Bolivian animals even some that are endangered. It may soon be impossible to see them except in zoos like the Santa Cruz Zoo so take a look at them while they still exist in the wild.

Living in Bolivia, the environment and the tropical forests are talked about a lot! People are worried about what will happen in the future if we don't stop deforestation. Did you know there are still tribes of people living in the Amazon who have never had contact with other human beings before and have no idea what the world is like out here? It's true! Just like there are thousands of species of plants and animals that we are just now discovering, there are also people living in the Amazon who have never before been seen!

Animals like this bayé (boa) need us to care. Click the picture of me to see where she lives.

Did you also know that there are plants that could cure things like arthritis or cancer and they grow only in the rainforest and nowhere else? These are called medicinal plants because you can make medicines out of them. Amazon tribes have been using them for thousands of years to stay healthy and cure illnesses. Here in Bolivia lots of people use medicinal plants instead of chemical medicines to get well.

Please take some time to learn about my part of the world. What happens to the forests here will affect the environment in your part of the world and anything that happens in your part of the world to contaminate the environment will also affect us here in Bolivia. The Amazon rainforest makes the oxygen that you and I both breathe! That's why I say, we ALL live in the rainforest!