EARTH’S VITAL FRONTLINES

What needs to be done to save our rainforests.

Rainforests, in all of their glorious diversity, aare the among the most extraordinary features of our planet, yet we are doing our level best to erase them. In this book, environmental campaigner Tony Juniper explores how vital these places are and the many far-reaching consequences of their destruction. It is very clear that the real value of rainforests does not come from timber or the mineral wealth beneath the trees, but from their incomprehensible variety of life, which this book encourages us to celebrate and cherish.

As well as examining each of the Earth’s main rainforest regions in detail, Juniper proposes some ways to halt and reverse the damage that has already been done. Rainforest is a little vertebrate-centric – much more could have been said about the small yet fascinating organisms that underpin the ecological processes in these forests – but overall it is a must-read.

Ross Piper Entomologist

Rainforests – here the Tambopata-Candamo reserve in Peru – are the lungs of our planet, storing carbon and maintaining water and air cycles.