It could be argued that there is no one single region in the tropics that has received so much attention from naturalists, scientists, and explorers the world over than the Amazon. It represents about 40 percent of the world's remaining rainforests and holds by far the largest intact section of diverse tropical wildlife. To many people the Amazon has become the quintessential symbolic last stand of a major wild, natural environment against the encroachment of civilization. Undoubtedly the Amazon has captured the imaginations of millions; but the future of this region should not be left to imagination, but rather to studied analyses based on the facts as we can best ascertain them. There has been remarkable progress over the past decades in conducting hard, scientific studies of the ecology, biology, and economics of the Amazon rainforest. Nevertheless the region is still the subject of many popular myths.

Indeed, the ongoing public and governmental struggle over the Amazon's future mirrors broader current discourses on “the environment.”