Cutting down the tropical rain forest in Brazil is promoted with the idea of providing jobs for the poor (a tenuous connection at best) and of making many individuals rich (clearly true in the short term). People in rural regions are struggling to make ends meet and populations continue to increase. Pressures to pay back foreign debts by producing foreign exchange through exports of commodities and sustaining urban areas that are exploding in population are resulting in the need to rapidly increase the extraction of natural resources and to develop natural areas. The result is that mass extinctions are at the highest rate in the history of our planet today, with the possible exception of the aftermath of the mile-wide asteroid hitting the earth about 60 million years ago. Remaining populations of many species have nowhere else to go, as humans have already occupied and altered the remaining habitats. The interdependent web of life is being broken, so that young birds, frogs or migrating insects do not find the resources they need for stages of their lives, and other species that depend on them for food or pollination don't get their needs met either.