Guyana’s Essequibo River and the nearby Iwokrama Forest and Rupununi Wetlands provide a home for a wide variety of plants and animals, including the crocodilian black caiman and endangered giant otter. Additionally, four hundred species of fish, like the carnivorous piranha, live in Guyana’s rivers, and eight hundred species of birds, such as the endangered harpy eagle, build their nests in the canopy of the rainforest. © CI, Haroldo Castro Without their habitat in the rainforest, these diverse species might not exist. Preserving their home helps these different creatures to survive and maintain the careful balance and food chain of the forest. If one species begins to die out, it can affect all the animals in that area. For example, the excrement of the black caiman used to feed plankton, the base of the food chain. The plankton clean the river by eating waste created by other animals, but the decrease in caiman population led to a decrease in plankton and small fish that feed upon it, therefore altering the food chain. Failing to preserve rainforests and their plants and animals can lead to extinction. These plants and animals may have unknown medicinal qualities that would be lost forever if they died out. The destruction of rainforests over the next 25 years is predicted to wipe out or endanger almost half of the world’s animals, plants, and microorganisms. Although a quarter of Western pharmaceuticals contain ingredients from plant sources, only 1% of rainforest plants have even been tested for medicinal value. Protecting the rainforest keeps these valuable resources intact and prevents further loss of species. © CI, Marcelo Arze *Black caiman: The biggest predator in the Amazon basin, this endangered carnivorous reptile grows to at least 13 feet in length. Maintaining a diet of birds, turtles, fish, and deer, larger caimans may also eat anacondas, jaguars, cougars, and tapirs, while young caimans feed on insects and crustaceans. Humans, the only predators of healthy adult black caimans, often kill the animals for leather or meat, which led to near-extinction of the species at one point. *Giant river otter (Pteronura brasiliensis): The world’s longest otter, also known as the river wolf, can reach six feet in length and weigh over 70 pounds. With thick chocolate-colored fur, they are often hunted by fur traders, and this has led to its endangerment. Eating fish, snakes, small caimans, and crabs, the giant otter is one of the largest predators in its habitat. These social creatures live in groups with their families and can be negatively influenced by human activity: a nursing mother may get so stressed by tourists coming close to their homes that she may no longer produce milk and cause her pups to starve.                                                                               © CI, Haroldo Castro    *Harpy eagle (Harpia harpyja): The most powerful eagle in the world, the harpy eagle weighs ten to eighteen pounds with a wingspan of about seven feet. Feeding on birds, iguanas, monkeys, opossums, big rodents, etc., the harpy eagle is a carnivore that hunts during the day. A pair of harpy eagles raises only one chick every two to three years, and this low rate of reproduction leads in part to a shrinking population. Destruction of their home, the rainforest, also contributes to their decline, and most forests only have one nest every ten or fifteen miles.   The fragile ecosystem of the Essequibo River area, and the 200,000 acre rainforest with which we help to preserve, could have been destroyed. However, Save Your World, in conjunction with Conservation International, leases back the rainforest acres through a timber concession grant and instead conserves this pristine area. By keeping these forests intact, we help enable the various species to continue to remain for future generations. After all, with your help, the purchase of 1 Product Equals 1 Acre of Rainforest Saved for 1 Year.   © CI, Russell A. Mittermeier   Other Rainforest Animals There are many interesting and unique animals found in the rainforest.  While not all of these species are endangered, the continued destruction and habitat loss can cause the balance of these species to migrate or lose migratory patterns of life.     Some of these animals may be more familiar like the charming black-headed caiques (Pionites melanocephala), also known as seven-color parrots or the black-headed parrot, (shown right), who lives in the rainforest canopy. They are threatened with habitat loss and capture for the pet trade. These extremely happy and energized creatures are highly sought after and domesticated.               © CI, John Martin     The Scarlet Macaw (Ara macao) is found in the rainforest of the Guayana Shield, a 2-billion-year-old rock formation beneath the northern Amazon.   The Guyana Shield contains more than a quarter of Earth's remaining tropical forests, prompting conservationist to connect protected areas, across this region. The Upper Essequibo Conservation Concession, is a part of the Guyana Shield. Losing these 2-billion-year-old areas to destruction would be an incredible loss of knowledge for future generations.    © CI, John Martin    Native red-handed tamarins aka midas tamarin and golden-handed tamarin (Saguinus midas) are named for the reddish hair on their feet and hands.  They are a New World Monkey species. They live in cooperative groups of 4 to 15 members with little competition even among the males during breeding times.    Only one female will breed during a season,  giving birth to just two offspring All other females surpress the instinct to breed in this unique display group dynamics.  The males care for the young and only give them back to the mother for nursing while the entire group will assist in the rearing of the seasons offspring. These creatures are extremely active and social. Their livelihood is threatened due to the destruction of their natural habitat.   © CI, John Martin    Two freshwater dolphin species, the boto and tucuxi, as well as other mammals, like rare uakari monkeys, also live in this area.   *Boto: Also known as the Pink River Dolphin because of its unique color, (shown right), the boto lives in the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers. Adult boto are usually around eight feet long and weigh 330 pounds. They feed on crabs, fish, and sometimes turtles and often travel in small groups.   *Tucuxi: Although these dolphins are found in similar locations to the boto, the species are not closely related. The tucuxi are found in the Amazon Basin and coastal waters north and east of South America, like near Guyana. Although comparable in appearance, they are smaller than the bottlenose dolphin and often feed with other river dolphins. Energetic and social, they may leap out of the water, called breaching, somersault, tail-splash, and more.  *Uakari (Cacajao calvus ucayalii) Monkey (shown right), or red-faced monkey as they are sometimes called, were originally named after "Dutchmen" or what the local tribes called sun-burned Europeans.These agile and active creatures can leap as much as 6 meters and fly among the lower branches of the trees in the rainforest.   Unique Plant Life in the Rainforest The Amazon River and it's contributory rivers, contains all sorts of freshwater fish, like the tambaqui, which are frugivorous, or fruit-eating. and feed on the fruit that falls from the trees when the river floods into the forest. In addition to hosting all kinds of animals, the rainforest is full of unique plants, such as giant water lilies (shown left), that can grow to six feet in diameter and support a lightweight human.   Rainforests harbor 70% or over 2,000 of the plants identified as having anti-cancer characteristics by the US National Cancer Institute. Destroying the rainforest is taking away medicines critical to treating major illness and the source of many of the medicines currently used today. But even more critical than that is the fact that less than one percent of the tropical rainforest species have even been analyzed for their medicinal value. We could very well be destroying the cure for cancer or AIDS. Rainforests are the earth’s oldest continuous ecosystems; located primarily around the earth’s equator, they were spared destruction during the ice ages. Fossil records show that the forests of Southeast Asia have existed in more or less their present form for 70 to 100 million years. Keeping the rainforests in their pristine state allows the ability to continue our research into the oldest living plant vegetation in the world and someday finding the cure for a multitude of diseases.   © CI/Haroldo Castro     Guyana is home to one of the largest, unspoiled rainforest on Earth. Learn more about how this rainforest impacts YOUR world. Please Click here to view this video.    References: http://news.mongabay.com/2006/0502-wc13.html http://www.projetoboto.com/ http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.php?id=263 http://www.livingrainforest.org/about/plants/giantwaterlily http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/wildfacts/factfiles/308.shtml http://www.bioone.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&issn=0097-3157&volume=154&issue=01&page=0039 http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/natsci/herpetology/brittoncrocs/csp_mnig.htm http://www.nature.org/animals/mammals/animals/giantotter. html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpy_eagle