This means that any loss of healthy rainforest could trigger serious climatic changes worldwide. For example, Northern Europe and Scandinavia could end up drier and colder, causing havoc to agriculture and people's lifestyles. Yet despite its importance few people nowadays can cope in the rainforest without specialist help. In the forest, newcomers quickly get lost. They sweat, they squelch through mangroves, they suffer from blisters as their booted feet stay damp from crossing and re-crossing rivers, sometimes the only practical route in and out of the forest.
Bodies respond with a yeasty smell and fungal infections.
This is the real thing. No wonder the rainforest at first seems a dull place to the visitor used to zoo exhibits of hyacinth macaws and chattering monkey troupes. And it's this lack of understanding which has helped allow so much of the world's forest to be abused. Learning to see On paper it is easier to appreciate the varieties of green, the staggering shapes of leaves, the tangle of liana vines, the unique niche each forest plant, insect and bird has engineered for itself to ensure the best possible chances of survival. In the scattered forests of the Solomons there are 170 species of birds, many of which have developed distinctive forms.