Cattle Ranching
Livestock agriculture plays a prodigious role in this Amazonian habitat destruction. In fact, by the year 2010 cattle grazed on nearly 24 million hectares of land that was forested in the year 2000 ), and not only that, but our rate of meat consumption is actually accelerating. Between 1990 and 2050 the rate of meat consumption on Earth is expected to skyrocket from 229 million tons per year to 465 million tons per year.
Logging companies cut down much of the rainforests and sell the land directly to cattle ranchers.
This pie chart displays percentages for how deforested Amazon land was use between the years 2000-2005
Cattle Farmers:
Much of the land deforested is for use of agriculture mainly cattle. Cutting down trees means that there's that much less carbon dioxide being sucked out of the atmosphere and livestock agriculture puts large amounts of methane. Deforestation is a double whammy for the environment. Not to mention that 60-70% of the land that has been deforested is used for livestock.
Number of heads of cattle (by the Millions) in the states of the Brazilian Amazon and the departments of the Bolivian and Peruvian Amazon.
The chart above shows livestock agricultures slow increase in greenhouse gas emissions over the course of the last two decades.