Environment and wildlife conservation to save the rainforest.
Wildlife conservation is imperative in saving the rainforest, it’s environment, and the integrity of its ecosystem which is a complex and interwoven system.
Over half the world’s species of wildlife live in the rainforest which is an environment that has been evolving for 55+ million years. This makes for biodiversity that is unknown on this scale in any other environment and the reason wildlife in the rainforest has the greatest gene pool of any place on the planet.
The Amazon rainforest is an environment that is home to an amazing array of wildlife. There are over 300 different mammals including jaguars, cougars, squirrel monkeys, and even two types of freshwater dolphins that live in the Amazon river. There are more than 3000 species of freshwater fish in the Amazon rainforest and a single pond in Brazil has more species than in all the rivers in Europe. In the African rainforest a four square mile environment could contain up to 400 species of birds including parrots, macaws and hornbills and Peru has 1300 species of butterflies. Wildlife in the rainforest is still diverse and plentiful, thanks to current acts of environmental conservation, and species continue to thrive in each layer of the rainforest.
The forest floor is the first layer of the rainforest and it can be a particularly dark environment because the tops of the trees, the canopy, blocks up to ninety eight percent of the sunlight. This makes the rainforest floor dark and humid where old foliage decomposes and is recycled into a nutrient rich soil. Wildlife in this type of environment consists of creeping, crawling bugs, spiders, worms and insects. This is the perfect environment for a tarantula and it’s predator, the
tarantula wasp, which paralyzes the tarantula with her stings, drags it back to her hole, then lays her eggs on it giving her babies a ready-made meal with they hatch. Funnel web spiders, whose body alone can be up to 2” long, can catch and eat small birds. Larger wildlife such as jaguars, tigers, elephants and gorillas also live on the rainforest floor. These larger animals greatly feel the effects of the elimination of their habitat and the changing environment around them. They naturally require more room to roam, hunt and mate but the rapid rate of deforestation is displacing these animals leading to diminished herds despite conservation efforts to save the rainforest.
Wildlife such as reptiles and amphibians manage to live in both the rainforest floor and the understory. The understory is the layer of the rainforest between the floor and the canopy. There is slightly more light here so the leaves are broad but the air is still hot and damp environment, so it’s a perfect place for a poison dart frog to rest on a leaf or a chameleon to sun itself on a branch. Snakes such as king cobras, pythons or boa constrictor could be curled up in a tree in the understory or sliding across forest floor. Other wildlife, such as butterflies, hummingbirds, bats and numerous insects are also predominantly found in the rainforest understory.
The most magical environment and well known layer of the rainforest is the canopy. The wildlife here is abundant and remarkable. The trees stretch out along the skyline high in the 
air, sometimes more than 100 feet. The rainforest is dryer and warmer up here which makes it a perfect environment for the sixty to ninety percent of wildlife which can be found in the canopy. The leaves can be so thick it is hard to see more than a few feet which means animals must adapt by using loud calls to communicate and swinging or jumping from tree to tree. Spider monkeys have disproportionately long limbs with gives them an advantage in this environment because they can swing from branch to branch high off the ground. Howler monkeys are some of the loudest wildlife in the rainforest and they can be clearly heard 20 miles away. Birds flourish in the canopy. Toucans hollow out trees to live in and parrots and cockatoos squawk and search for seeds.
The last layer of the rainforest is called the emergent layer and the environment here is comprised of super tall trees that have grown above the canopy. The emergent layer gets more sun than any other area and the trees can be two hundred or even three hundred feet tall. Wildlife in this part of the rainforest is limited. There are some monkeys, like the black and white Columbus Monkey in Africa, but by the time we reach this layer the wildlife is basically limited to birds and butterflies because they have the ability to fly from tree to tree.
Jaguars, cougars, pumas, toucans, spider monkeys and howler monkeys are all
a part of the rainforests endangered wildlife. In fact, 35 different species of animals become extinct in the rainforest every single day. Despite current environmental conservation efforts, numbers like these show us that not enough is being done. With their habitat being deforested and poachers bringing certain animals to near extinction the fight to save the rainforest and its wildlife becomes even more urgent and important. Support environment and wildlife conservation in the rainforest.