Kanuku Mountains Expedition Take Off

Rain forests are being destroyed – it's true. Conservation organizations, governments and indigenous groups agree and want to protect their tropical wilderness.

Logs ready for transport.

The good news is that we're in a place in the tropics with vast tracts of untouched wilderness and people here want to conserve it. The Guyana Shield is a wide swath of land covering parts of Suriname, Guyana, and Venezuela, which still contain a solid 75 percent of its rain forest in a pristine state.

Our RAP team is camped on land that is a logging concession. Limitations on how many trees per hectare can be cut is an important way to ensure there are future timber harvests.

LEARN MORE: Saving Forests

Road used to transport logs.

To access forests, logging companies build wide access roads like the one we came in on to carry the logs out. Conservationists are concerned about roads and trucks because trucks destroy additional forests and habitats as they maneuver the giant trees. Roads also encourage people to move onto the land (in many cases illegally) and burn tracts of rain forest for agriculture. The roads also cause run-off into the rivers, which changes the flow and habitat of the river.

In many countries logging is an important economic industry. Once RAP better understands the biology of the forests here, that data can be used as a reason to protect forests previously offered as a logging concession. Finding ways to leave forests standing while creating economic benefits to do so is a long-term challenge.

ACT: Protect an acre of forest today.

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