First Baptist protects over 3,300 acres of critical tropical habitat

First Baptist Church, Austin, TX, has achieved quite a few outstanding things over the last several years, including: 

• Winning the City of Austin's Green Business Leaders' Platinum Award 
• Producing numerous, ongoing educational and outdoor engagement events
• Protecting old-growth tropical rainforests in Colombia, Peru, and Papua New Guinea

Protecting old-growth rainforests has been, by far, the most environmentally beneficial.

To date, FBC's tropical rainforest conservation will help:  

1. Stop Greenhouse Emissions -- by keeping over 800,000 tons of greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere (offsetting the church's annual carbon footprint for roughly 2,500 years),
2. Eliminate Future Emissions & Cool the Earth -- by protecting ongoing tropical forest carbon sequestration equivalent to offsetting over 500 individual carbon footprints for life,
3. Protect A Lot of Biodiversity -- by protecting the world's most biodiverse places, tropical rainforests, FBC has already helped save over 6,000 threatened plant and animal species,
4. Move Environmental Justice Forward -- by helping over 100 indigenous communities and 1 uncontacted tribe secure long-term protection and occupation rights of their ancestral lands. 

But wait there's more --
Tropical Rainforests provide 20% of Earth's oxygen, absorb 20% of our greenhouse gasses, cool the Earth and are determinant in Earth's overall temperature and rainfall patterns, contain up to 50% of all biodiversity, produce over 3,000 foods for human consumption, contain the greatest concentration of threatened indigenous communities on our planet as well as the greatest concentration of potential cancer cures and other natural medicines. These are literally the most productive ecosystems on our planet. Why protect them? Since 1800 rapid human expansion has deforested roughly 80% of old growth tropical rainforests, allowing for less than half to grow back. This rapid "state shift" threatens the near-term future of all life on Earth, today. 

Currently, rapid human expansion is causing deforestation of roughly 1 acre of tropical rainforest every second, even as you're reading this. These ecosystems are the most threatened and most significant to Earth's overall vitality today. Protecting and restoring tropical rainforest ecosystems is our most empowered way to stop today's biodiversity extinction crisis, heal the climate, and strengthen global life support systems. 

In 2016, First Baptist was awarded BioIntegrity's Global Environmental Citizen certificate, for the congregation's outstanding total contributions, since 2014. First Baptist has been working with my company, BioIntegrity.net, to access the most urgent and economically efficient opportunities to stop and reverse tropical deforestation. Please contact us if you'd like to learn more.
-- Chris S.