Everyday we all use something that originated in tropical rainforests. Bananas, mangos, oranges and lemons, cinnamon, black pepper tea, coffee, rice and sago all have their origins in tropical forests. Wild tropical forest plants have now been cultivated to provide ingredients for many commodities such as lipsticks, chewing gum and ice cream.

Modern medicine has extracted useful chemicals from tropical forest plants, curare a muscle relaxant that has allowed safer surgery, quinine to fight malaria, snakeroot for blood pressure and the yam provides one of the main ingredients in the contraceptive pill. Cancer fighting drugs owe their origin to the rosy periwinkle from Madagascar and in the tiny remnants of the forests of Comoros Islands north of Madagascar a caffeine free coffee has recently been discovered.

Industry world-wide also turns to tropical forests for raw materials. Not only timber but rubber, latex, gums, resins, tannins, waxes and dyes are a few of the commodities extracted.

Our knowledge of tropical plants and animals is very inadequate and species are disappearing faster than they can be studied. Since 1945 more than 50% of the world's tropical rainforests have been destroyed, and hundreds of species of plants and animals made extinct.

It is vital to conserve these forests with the concentrated biodiversity that is so little understood.

Many companies are now trying to buy these plants and own the copyright on the gene materials - just in case they could provide new drugs and renewable resources .