Global tree loss fell 14 percent in 2025 from the year before, according to a report published on Wednesday by World Resources Institute, with the decline largely driven by progress in protecting tropical forests.<\/p>\n
The total area destroyed worldwide was roughly 63 million acres, or 25.5 million hectares, the institute\u2019s annual analysis found. But less tree cover was razed intentionally last year than any other year in the past decade, and losses in primary tropical forests were 36 percent lower than last year\u2019s record highs<\/a>.<\/p>\n The report was a bright spot amid a concerning trend of global forest loss, researchers said.<\/p>\n \u201cGenerally speaking, a good year is a good year,\u201d said Matt Hansen, a professor at the University of Maryland and director of the Global Land Analysis and Discovery laboratory, which contributed forest-loss data to the report. \u201cBut you need good years forever if you\u2019re going to conserve the tropical rainforest.\u201d<\/p>\n Last year\u2019s gains were offset, however, by destruction from wildfires, which consumed about 26 million acres, an area almost as large as Cuba.<\/p>\n Scientists have found that the changing climate is setting the stage for extreme wildfires, which are doubling in both frequency and intensity<\/a> worldwide. Climate change is also intensifying droughts and storms, and facilitating the spread of pests and diseases that can harm forests.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re on a kind of knife\u2019s edge,\u201d said Rod Taylor, global director for forest and nature conservation at the World Resources Institute. The biome could reach a tipping point, he said, in which forests are no longer powerful carbon sinks that help regulate the climate, but become a source of planet-warming carbon emissions, released when they are burned or logged.<\/p>\n The institute issued a separate report this year that found that forests around the world were absorbing only a quarter of the carbon that they once did, and some areas have become a net source of emissions<\/a>.<\/p>\n More than 140 countries have agreed to halt and reverse<\/a> forest loss by 2030, but deforestation remains 70 percent higher than the level needed for the world to meet that commitment, the report found.<\/p>\n