The Amazon Rainforest亞馬孫雨林

張祖平

The Amazon Rainforest is the Worlds Largest Rainforest. It has some 390 billion trees， which adds up to half the total of the worlds surviving rainforests and 16，000 different species2 of trees.

亞馬孫雨林是世界第一大雨林，有大約3900億棵樹，總計占全球僅存的雨林面積的一半，樹木種類達16000種。

More than half the Amazon Basins3 1.4 billion acres4 are in Brazil， including thousands of miles of the Amazon River， the worlds largest river by volume5 6.9 million cubic6 meters.

亞馬孫盆地占地14億英畝，一半多位于巴西，包括長數(shù)千英里，流量690萬立方米的世界第一大河——亞馬孫河。

The Amazon is home to 1 in 10 of the worlds known species， 20 percent of the worlds bird species， 40，000 plant species and trees which are very important to limiting greenhouse gases.

亞馬孫雨林是全球十分之一的已知物種，全球五分之一種類的鳥類、以及40000種植物和對限制溫室效應至關(guān)重要的樹木的家園。

The forest serves as a big filter7， sucking in and storing CO2 from the atmosphere， about 2.2 billion tons a year， according to a study， providing a very important weapon in the battle against pollution and global warming.

這片森林是一個巨大的過濾器，吸收、儲存大氣中的二氧化碳。研究表明，亞馬孫每年吸收22億噸的二氧化碳，為抵抗污染和全球變暖提供了一項重要武器。

Its reported that deforestation8 destroys a big area of the Amazon as large as the size of Delaware every year. The biggest causes are stock farming （80 percent of the destroyed land）. Progress has been made in recent years to reduce deforestation， but there are concerns that the current political instability9 could undo all that.

據(jù)報道，采伐森林每年毀壞一大片亞馬孫森林，面積相當于美國的特拉華州。罪魁禍首是畜牧業(yè)（占百分之八十的被伐林地）。近年來，減少采伐有所進展，但是，人們擔心，政局不穩(wěn)可能會讓這些前功盡棄。