Good news for a change.

Brazil has cordoned off a swath of untouched Amazon rainforest the size of Alabama, home to more than half of the basin's plant and animal species, according to Conservation International.

"If any tropical rain forest on Earth remains intact a century from now, it will be this portion of northern Amazonia," Conservation International President Russell Mittermeier said.

There is some offsetting bad news from Amazonia however. According to the same article,"Over the past four years, an area larger than South Carolina has been cut down."