Introduction
The South American country of Brazil is well-known for its biodiversity and wealth of natural resources. The Amazon River and rainforest are located in Brazil, a country with more than 800,000 square miles of coastline, and a landmass so large that its borders touch all but two of its neighboring countries (Rich, 1999). The Amazon rainforest is the world's largest tropical rainforest, and for purposes of comparison, "its size is equivalent to one-half of the entire United States" (Rich, 1999). …
