Football Field of Rainforest Destroyed Every Six Seconds
PARIS (AFP) — Vast tracts of pristine rainforest on three continents went up in smoke last year, with an area roughly the size of Switzerland cut down or burned to make way for cattle and commercial crops, researchers said Tuesday.
Brazil accounted for more than a third of the loss, with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia a distant second and third, Global Forest Watch said in its annual report, based on satellite data.
The 14,500 square miles destroyed in 2019 — equivalent to a football pitch of old-growth trees every six seconds — made it the third most devastating year for primary forests since the scientists began tracking their decline two decades ago.
“We are concerned that the rate of loss is so high despite all the efforts of different countries and companies to reduce deforestation,” lead researcher Mikaela Weisse, Global Forest Watch project manager at the World Resources Institute, told AFP.
If second-growth forests and plantations are included, the total area of tropical forest levelled by fire and bulldozers worldwide in 2019 was in fact three times bigger.
But virgin rainforests, as they were once known, are especially precious.
Undisturbed by modern development, they harbor the richest diversity of wildlife on Earth, and keep huge stores of carbon locked in their woody mass.
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