It's getting worse by the day, and these ecosystems, which have taken tens of millions of years to reach their mature state, are gone forever once lost -- there's no going back.

We're bearing witness to the greatest mass extinction since the time of the dinosaurs. Almost 18,000 species and 52,000,000 acres of tropical rainforest are being destroyed every year, all from an ecosystem that comprises less than 2% of the world's surface. The natural rate of extinction is estimated to be between one and two species per year, but the present rate is 10,000 times that - about one species per hour.