Storm over the Amazon, E. O. Wilson contrasts :

Violent nature with resilient life

Amazonas is "one of the great surviving wildernesses of the world, stretching 500 kilometers…"

 (3)

"This is the assembly of life that took a billion years to evolve. It has eaten the storms -- folded them into its genes and created the world that created us. It holds the world steady."

   (15)

• the greatest bank of biological differences lies in the tropical rain forests
• some disturbance assists in increasing the assets of biodiversity
• too much disturbance diminishes the assets of biological diversity
• more than 60% of the diversity of rain forests exists in the canopy above the floor