Major findings
- Almost half of Earth's original forest cover is gone, much of it destroyed within the past three decades.
- Today, just one fifth of the world's original forest cover remains in large tracts of relatively undisturbed forest -- what WRI calls frontier forest.
- Three countries -- Russia, Canada, and Brazil -- house almost 70 percent of the world's remaining frontier forest.
- 40 percent of forest on Earth today qualifies as frontier forest.
- Seventy-six countries assessed in this study have lost all of their frontier forest.
- 39 percent of Earth's remaining frontier forest is threatened by logging, agricultural clearing, and other human activity.
- Only 3 percent of the world's frontier forest falls entirely within the temperate zone (regions characterized by moderate climate, including much of the U.S and Europe). Today, temperate forests are the most endangered frontier forests of all.
- Half of today's frontier forest lies in boreal regions within Canada, Russia, and Alaska inhospitable northern zones between temperate forest and tundra.
- Outside of boreal regions, about 75 percent of the world's frontier forest is threatened.
- Eleven countries -- including Finland, Sweden, Vietnam, Guatemala and Thailand -- are on the verge of losing their frontier forest. These countries maintain less than 5 percent of their original forest as frontier, and all of it is threatened.
