The survival of the Amazon rainforest is under threat

Join us as Prof Sir Ghillean Prance discusses the irreplaceable Amazon rainforest and how man's intrusion into it has caused the wholesale destruction of an ecological system involving both humans and plants.

The Amazon rainforest is a broadleaf tropical rainforest that covers most of the Amazon basin of South America. The basin encompasses 7,000,000 km2 of which 6,000,000 km2 is covered by rainforest. This region includes territory belonging to nine nations and 3,344 indigenous territories.

Prof Prance is a botanist and former Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. He has travelled and researched extensively in South America, with a focus on sustainability and management of the environment.

He has carried out extensive fieldwork, principally in the Amazon rainforest, where he lived with many Amazonian tribes and identified more than 350 new species of plant.

Prof Prance says that further destruction of the rainforest could be prevented by learning about sustainable management of the rainforest from the tribes that live there.

Host or Publisher The Plymouth Athenaeum