The woods are not lost

The world’s forests are increasingly holding their own these days.

Forests matter. They shelter wildlife, cool the air, protect watersheds, provide lumber, offer beauty and natural settings, and – not least – extract carbon from the atmosphere.

Deforestation in Brazil has dropped to the lowest levels since 2012–2014, its previous low and a small fraction of the land that was stripped each year through the 20th century. Colombia slowed forest clearing by 25 percent from 2024 to 2025. Over that same period, the acreage burned in the Brazilian Amazon dropped by two thirds. Meanwhile, large trees are adapting to climate change by growing even bigger and more numerous, and sucking more carbon out of the atmosphere.

Overall, global deforestation has fallen for the third decade in a row and is approaching a balance with reforestation. Deforestation in South America has dropped significantly but the continent is still losing acreage. Europe and Asia are stable or reforesting. Africa is still losing a lot of forest to agriculture.

In Europe, forest growth significantly exceeded forest harvest (lumber) overall, and by at least some degree in every country except Estonia in 2023, the most recently available data.

Mangrove forests are also recovering around the world. They were shrinking from the 1980s through 2010 but have since reclaimed vast territory – to within half a percent of their historical total. Mangroves are incredibly productive ecosystems for marine life, prevent soil erosion and even build land, filter and clean water, and extract carbon from the atmosphere at a rate ten times that of rainforests on land. They have almost completely bounced back.

Sources: Fix the News; Mongabay; UN FAO; Eurostat; Science