The Amazon River and Rainforest is among the fourteen most voted Candidates competing to be one of the New Seven Wonders of Nature, according to the latest ranking of contest organizer, the New 7 Wonders Foundation. This week the ranking shows the finalists ranked by total votes received until now, in two groups: the top 14 and the bottom 14, listed alphabetically.
Among the top 14 are Amazon, Angel Falls, Bay of Fundy, Dead Sea, Galapagos
Grand Canyon, Great Barrier Reef, Halong Bay, Iguazu Falls, Jeita Grotto, Komodo, Maldives, Puerto Princesa and Vesuvius.
While the bottom 14 include Black Forest, Bu Tinah Shoals, Cliffs of Moher, El Yunque, Jeju Island, Kilimanjaro, Masurian Lake, Matterhorn/Cervino, Milford Sound, Mud Volcanoes, Sundarbands, Table Mountain, Uluru and Yushan.
The Amazon Rainforest, also known as Amazonia, the Amazon jungle or the Amazon Basin, encompasses seven million square kilometers (1.7 billion acres), though the forest itself occupies some 5.5 million square kilometers (1.4 billion acres), located within nine nations.
The Amazon represents over half of the planet's remaining rainforests and comprises the largest and most species-rich tract of tropical rainforest in the world. The Amazon River is the largest river in the world by volume, with a total flow greater than the top ten rivers worldwide combined. It accounts for approximately one-fifth of the total world river flow and has the biggest drainage basin on the planet. Not a single bridge crosses the Amazon.
(Image: The Amazon River)