The world lost a massive amount of forest land in 2024, more than double the year before. This was the result of fires, extreme heat, climate change, and farming expansion in tropical forests. The loss of forest land came at a blinding pace. About 18 football fields vanished each minute. This caused the loss of 6.7 million hectares. That's nearly 26,000 square miles. It's a space roughly the size of the country of Panama. The data comes from a newly released study. It was performed by the University of Maryland. It's available on the World Resources Institute’s (WRI) Global Forest Watch platform. About half of the forest loss came from fires. They were sparked by a mixture of human and climate factors. Humans set blazes to clear forest land for farming. But those blazes can spread, especially during extreme heat. Last year was the hottest on record. And “extreme conditions fueled by climate change and (the) El Niño (weather pattern) made these fires more intense and harder to control,” the study’s authors wrote. Most of the loss occurred in tropical regions of Brazil and Bolivia. The study focused mainly on those South American regions, noting their significance for biodiversity, storage of carbon (CO2), and the regulation of regional climates. Trees absorb CO2 emissions from gas-fueled cars, factories, and other sources that cause climate change. This makes the forest loss that much more crucial. Global fires caused 4.1 billion tons of CO2 emissions in 2024. That’s about "more than 4 times the emissions from air travel in 2023,” WRI experts wrote. “It's a global red alert," Elizabeth Goldman wrote in a statement. Goldman's the WRI co-director. Goldman added it's also a joint call to action for every person "who cares about a livable planet.” Reflect: What are some ways people and communities can work together to protect important natural places?
