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Forests

Tropical primary forest loss

The World Resources Institute reports that the world lost 4.3 million hectares of tropical primary rainforest in 2025, 36 percent less than in the record year 2024.

University of Maryland Global Land Analysis and Discovery laboratory and Global Forest Watch · 4.3 million hectares · 2025

Aerial view of cleared land prepared for crops or cattle near Porto Velho, Rondônia, Brazil, with forest along the field edge and a stream.

Aerial view of cleared land prepared for crops or cattle near Porto Velho, Rondônia, Brazil, with forest at the edge of the fields and along a stream.

Photo: Bruno Kelly, Amazônia Real, via Wikimedia Commons, licence Creative Commons Attribution 2.0. ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ )

What it is

New annual data from the Global Land Analysis and Discovery laboratory at the University of Maryland, available on Global Forest Watch, the platform of the World Resources Institute, show that the world lost 4.3 million hectares of tropical primary rainforest in 2025. The World Resources Institute describes this as an area roughly the size of Denmark, or 11 football (soccer) fields every minute. The laboratory tree cover loss data capture changes at approximately 30 by 30 metre resolution across all global land areas except Antarctica and other Arctic islands.

Why it matters

Loss of tropical primary rainforest fell by 36 percent from the record high of 2024, when the tropics lost 6.7 million hectares, driven largely by fires. Loss in 2025 is still 46 percent higher than a decade ago. The World Resources Institute says Brazil cut its loss of primary forest that was not burned by 41 percent compared with 2024, reaching its lowest level on record. Elizabeth Goldman, Co-Director of Global Forest Watch, said that part of the decline reflects a lull after an extreme fire year.

How to read it

The World Resources Institute Global Forest Review focuses on primary forests in the humid tropics, which it describes as areas of mature rainforest that are especially important for biodiversity, carbon storage and regulating regional and local climate. It focuses on the tropics because that is where 94 percent of deforestation occurs. The figure of 4.3 million hectares covers humid tropical primary forest only. For all forests worldwide, tree cover loss in 2025 was 25.5 million hectares, and fires were responsible for 42 percent of it. Agricultural expansion remains the leading driver of tree cover loss overall.

Limits

The Global Forest Watch data explainer says that tree cover loss includes both loss widely considered to be deforestation, such as conversion of natural forest to agricultural land, and loss that is usually treated differently, such as timber harvesting in plantation forests or natural disturbances, which makes tree cover loss a wider measure than deforestation alone. The University of Maryland laboratory map of primary humid tropical forest was made for the year 2001 at 30-metre resolution from Landsat satellite imagery. The World Resources Institute expects El Niño conditions in 2026 to test whether countries are better prepared to prevent and respond to large-scale fires.

Sources

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