Taterskin & The Eco Defenders: Book 2, Chapter 34
Book 2 ("Tell It to Future Generations"), Chapter 34 of 56
CHAPTER 34
This was to be, perhaps, our biggest and most important job of all: The Amazon rainforest, the lungs of the world. From 1978 on, it would be poked, prodded, scraped, stripped, and poisoned: Large-scale commercial ranching, farming, mining, and logging were to have the same effect on it as smoking 10 packs of cigarettes a day has on human (or animal) lungs — unless we did something to prevent it. Which is why we went.
We expected to benefit from any number of volunteers from among the denizens of the rainforest. There are at least trillions, if not quadrillions or even a quintillion robust and powerful animals native to the region, from Jaguars and Ocelots to Anacondas and Boas to Caimans and Crocodiles to Howler Monkeys to Giant Otters and Armadillos and Anteaters and Centipedes (everything seems to grow larger in the rainforest), Spectacled Bears, Bush Dogs (who are related to wolves, but look more like my puppies than they do Buck or White Fang), Jumping Spiders, Tapirs, Capybaras (the largest rodent in the world, truly ‘Rodents of Unusual Size’), Vampire Bats, Eyelash Vipers, Piranhas, Stingrays, Water Monkeys, Manatees, River Dolphins, Poison Dart Frogs of several different hues, as well as various Macaws (the largest Parrots on earth) ... and that’s merely scratching the surface of the variety of fauna indigenous to the jungle.
In point of fact, it has gone without mentioning (until now) that over 90 percent of the Amazon’s animals are Insects, Spiders, and Worms. Although some of the Mammals in the forest can weigh hundreds of pounds, the combined weight of the Ants, Wasps, and Termites alone make up more than half the weight of all the forest’s creatures. If you were to turn a Titan Beetle and a Hercules Beetle to face each other at the midpoint of a footstick (a 12” ruler), both of them would hang off their respective edges a little.
Even among humans, we expected to receive a warm welcome — from some of them, at least; we knew that those engaged in large-scale ranching, farming, mining, and logging operations would extend to us a different sort of welcome, though.
Why did we choose the Amazon rainforest as our base of operations and the focus of our efforts in fighting against pollution and climate change? After all, there are rainforests all throughout the tropics; the Amazon is not the only one.
While that is true, the Amazon is the largest of them all; it is 10 times the size of Spain, the country whose rulers once held sway over much of America, from Mexico in the north (extending up into what later became the United States of America) down to the southern tips of Argentina and Chile.
The Amazon River, which flows within the tropical forest, is also the largest feature of its type on earth. As mentioned already, one of the islands at the mouth of the river (namely, Marajó) is about the size of Switzerland. There are 1,100 lesser rivers that pay the Amazon liquid tribute by contributing their flows to it. It is such a long and serpentine channel that its exact length is unknown. It is known that its length exceeds 4,000 miles, which is longer than the distance between Seattle, Washington and Miami, Florida, and covers more miles than those between San Diego, California and Bangor, Maine. Ten percent of the animals and plants on earth live in the Amazon. The Pantanal, to the South, is the largest swamp on the surface of the globe.
As you have no doubt concluded by now, it’s hard to be hyperbolic about the Amazon. It’s a vitally important region. Its health and preservation are necessary to all life on earth. It is itself a composite life form.
The Amazon. The Eco Defenders will stop at nothing to protect it from those who would scrape it and rape it, burn it and churn it, pollute it and dilute it, just to fill their pockets with oodles of boodle.
Why is deforestation, in particular, such a bad thing? For one thing, it leaves nowhere for the wildlife to live. So the animals we recruit into our fold will be literally fighting for their families and their homes.
With the importance of our task motivating us and impelling us forward, we landed on the Amazon River, making a literal splash on our arrival. We hid our JNG-Fs in the vegetation on one of the many islands of the Anavilhanas Archipelago.
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