1.Read the text and answer the questions after it. Write down your short answers. Destroying the Rainforest Why are people destroying rainforests? There is a short answer to that question: money. Countries with rainforests cut ...

1.Read the text and answer the questions after it. Write down your short answers. Destroying the Rainforest Why are people destroying rainforests? There is a short answer to that question: money. Countries with rainforests cut down about 50,000 km2 (square kilometers) of trees every year, and sell the wood to the rich countries of the world. International business buys rainforests in Latin America where land is very cheap.They cut down trees, sell the wood, and then use the land for feeding. Japan doesn't cut down trees, which grow in Japan - but forty percent of all the world's rainforest wood goes to this country. Switzerland stopped buying rainforest wood in 1982. But have many countries done the same? If we want to help the rainforest, we must never buy furniture made of rainforest wood. Many countries cut down rainforests and plant coffee and sugar, which they can sell to rich countries. Not many insects and animals can live in coffee and sugar plantations. A lot of them become endangered and die in the end. We need to learn more about the trees of the rainforests, before we destroy them. For example, one famous tree is the petroleum nut tree, from Philippines. This tree makes oil, which we can use for fires for cooking or lighting. One of these trees can make fifty litres of oil every year. People make roads in rainforesrs.Without the trees to protect the ground, the heavy rain quickly washes away the soil near the roads and nothing can grow there again. Once in Madagascar there were thousands of trees in the mountains and thousands of animals lived there. Nothing can grow there now, and no animals can live there. Are we to destroy all the rainforests of the world? We must begin thinking of other ways to get money, we should begin planting young trees in the rainforests. We must think twice before cutting down trees in the rainforests. Certainly people will use the rainforests but they should protect them too 1) Where does wood from rainforests go? 2) How do they use the land after they cut down the forests growing on it? 3) Which of the two countries uses rainforest wood: Switzerland or Japan? 4) Why do we need to know more about rainforests? 5) Why is the petroleum nut tree unusual? 6) What happens to the soil after people cut down the trees? 7) Why do people destroy rainforests? Is it absolutely necessary?