Our disappearing forests

A quarter of the forest lost over the last 10,000 years has been destroyed in the last 30 years. Forest loss means biodiversity loss. Plant and animal species extinction is 1000 times faster today than it was in prehuman times – and this will increase to 10,000 times faster by 2050.

Scientists predict that the earth is entering the sixth major extinction event in its history.

World map of last intact forest landscapes

Click on the map to enlarge

Mapping the problem

Until now, world maps were not accurate or consistent enough to show which forest areas remain intact and which are damaged. It was hard to see which forest areas needed the most urgent protection.

Now Greenpeace has created a new map of the world’s forests, based on high-resolution satellite imagery. It shows us the remaining large forest areas and lets us compare them with Earth's original forest cover. This groundbreaking research shows that the world’s remaining ancient forests are in greater crisis than previously thought. To save them, we must act now.

Size matters to forest biodiversity

A forest must be intact enough to sustain its animals. Only intact forest landscapes of several thousand square kilometres are big enough for healthy populations of  larger forest animals like jaguars, bears, tigers and elephants.

While some forests are not totally deforested, they are broken and degraded beyond any hope of being a viable habitat for a diverse range of plants and animals.

Roadmap to recovery

To preserve the last intact forests and the biodiversity they support, we must protect large, unbroken areas from further industrial exploitation. The moment a road or pipeline is built, the forest and its precious balance of interdependent species starts degrading.

With these new maps, we can begin to monitor the last large forests landscapes. They are the start of a roadmap to recovery.

World governments can use the maps to identify which forest areas most need protection and to fast track setting up a global network of protected forest areas.

Summary of findings:

• Less than 10 per cent of the planet’s land area remains as intact forest landscapes.
• 82 out of 148 countries lying within the original forest zone have lost all their intact forest landscapes.
• The majority of the world's last remaining intact forest landscapes consist of two major forest types: tropical rainforest and boreal forest.
• 49 per cent of the remaining intact forests are the tropical forests of Latin America, Africa and Asia Pacific.
• 44 per cent of the remaining intact forests are the great boreal forests of Russia, Canada and Alaska.

For more detailed maps available as Google Earth (.kmz) or Arcview (.shp) file downloads, an explanation of the methodology and a discussion forum, go to www.intactforests.org. View references for the information on this page.