Tropical Rainforests of Central America

These online videos include a video introduction for naturalists to the New World Tropics, videos featuring tropical birds: trogons, motmots, toucans, and puffbirds, mammals: jaguar, ocelot, and howler monkey, tropical herps: poison dart frogs, boa constrictor, basilisk lizards, iguanas, and the green spiny lizard, and insects and spiders: butterflies, dragonflies, beetles, and tarantulas.

Tropical rainforests comprise 2% of the earth's surface yet are home to 50% of all living species; one species, ours, is destroying these forests. In Brazilian Amazonia, the heart of the Neotropics, an area the size of Iceland (10 million hectares) was cleared in one decade - largely for the production of hamburger. In the time it takes you to eat a quarter pounder and fries one more species goes extinct and 1200 more acres of rainforest are cleared. Consevation organizations regularly, and correctly, cite the potential loss of "miracle" drugs as unnamed plant species blink out one by one. All such appeals, while understandable, are pleas to the human condition. As Aldo Leopold pointed out, Abraham knew exactly what the land was for; it was to drip milk and honey into Abraham's mouth. I'm hopeful that these videos will in some way motivate each of us to reconsider our place on planet Earth.