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DCL
What makes a forest a rainforest? Well, uh, rain. You need a minimum normal annual rainfall between 68-78 inches to qualify. Across the globe, rainforests—tropical or temperate—are where two-thirds of all the living animal and plant species on Earth call home. No one knows how many more species of plants, insects and microorganisms remain undiscovered but estimates run into the hundreds of millions.
Today, rainforest are best known for being targeted for destruction. Humans, in the their infinite wisdom, can't seem to keep their hands off rainforests. Thus protection is crucial and one of the easiest most effective steps is to say no to the meat-based diet. An estimated 200 million pounds of beef are imported from Central America every year and this requires land for cattle grazing which, in turn, requires rainforest clear-cutting. Every minute of every day, we lose the equivalent of a football field of rainforest to make room for doomed cattle. That's 55 square feet of forest per hamburger.
