Old Growth Forests - Locations of Remaining Tracts

Locations of Remaining Tracts

In 2006 Greenpeace identified that the world's remaining Intact forest landscapes are distributed among the continents as follows:

• 35% in Latin America. The Amazon rainforest is mainly located in Brazil, which clears a larger area of forest annually than any other country in the world.
• 28% in North America. North America harvests 10,000 square kilometres of ancient forests every year. Many of the fragmented forests of southern Canada and the United States lack adequate animal travel corridors and functioning ecosystems for large mammals.
• 19% in Northern Asia. Northern Asia is home to the largest boreal forest in the world.
• 8% in Africa. Africa has lost most of its intact forest landscapes in the last 30 years. The timber industry is responsible for destroying huge areas of intact forest landscapes and continues to be the single largest threat to these areas.
• 7% in South Asia Pacific. The Paradise Forests of Asia Pacific are being destroyed faster than any other forest on Earth. Much of the large intact forest landscapes have already been cut down, 72% in Indonesia and 60% in Papua New Guinea.
• Less than 3% in Europe. In Europe, more than 150 square kilometres of intact forest landscapes are cleared every year and the last areas of the region’s intact forest landscapes in European Russia are shrinking rapidly.