- May 04, 2026
- By Laura Ours
New data released by UMD’s Global Land Analysis and Discovery (GLAD) Lab and the World Resources Institute (WRI) shows that tropical rainforest destruction fell worldwide by 36% in 2025, from about 16.6 million acres destroyed in 2024 to 10.6 million last year.
The findings suggest that strong environmental policies and enforcement can move the needle on the loss of tropical primary forests, which are vital for climate stability and biodiversity, and offer sources of food, income and protection for millions of people worldwide. Their loss releases significant amounts of carbon while weakening one of our planet’s most vital natural defenses against the impacts of climate change, the research team said in its report.
The loss in 2025 was equal to a forest area the size of 11 soccer fields being destroyed every minute. While sobering, it represents an improvement, which the scientists attribute to improved environmental policies in key countries—including Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia and Colombia—but said natural factors also come into play.
“A drop of this scale in a single year is encouraging,” said Elizabeth Goldman, co-director of WRI’s Global Forest Watch. “But part of the decline reflects a lull after an extreme fire year. Fires and climate change are feeding off each other, and with El Niño on the horizon for 2026, investments in prevention and response will be critical as extreme fire conditions become the norm.”
The report also detailed how climate-driven fires have reached a dangerous new level, which could threaten any progress made in forest loss. “Climate change and land clearing have shortened the fuse on global forest fires,” said Matthew Hansen, professor of geographical sciences and GLAD Lab Director. “Droughts are more severe, longer and frequent. The result is higher fire risk for more and more forests. Policies to reduce this risk are a global-scale need.”
The research team also cautions that, in spite of this downward trend in forest loss, current levels of loss are about 70% above where they need to be to meet the goals of the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration, established in 2021 to commit to halting and reversing forest loss by 2030.