Just reading about the amazon rain forest, whilst i agree its still very vast but i do worry for its future, its being destroyed at an alarming rate.
Yeah, it's big. IIRC, Volkswagen (sic) owns a tract about the size of Switzerland. Others have more.
But, well, if you look at the time taken to bring the North American bison to virtual extinction ... The size of a resource makes little odds, if it's being over-exploited. Talking of North America, the speed with which parts of that were deforested is remarkable. Wood had become short in Britain very early, which is why coal was early exploited here. In the U.S. wood was used for darn near everything -- even railway viaducts.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seeds-Wealth-Four-Plants-that/dp/0330488120/
Terrible ecological damage. And unfortunately, we're also talking about the destruction of some of the last hunter-gatherer communities on earth, too.
I'd strongly recommend the book linked below as a good read. Norman Lewis, said to be one of the greatest travel writers of the last century, on the exploitation of the native peoples. You can get it for a penny at Amazon (the other one!) plus postage. It's the strange story of how South American governments, business, and "Christian" missionaries were, effectively, working hand-in-hand to bring about the native peoples' dispossesion. The missionaries would be allowed access on account political and economic leaders were switched-on enough to realize that a people's economy, material culture, way of life, and spiritual beliefs make a kind of circle, so that if you undermine people spiritually and culturally by breaking down their religious traditions, it then becomes easier to exploit and disposses them:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Missionaries-Arena-Books-Norman-Lewis/dp/0099599600/