How much forest is that?
Forest loss is always reported in football pitches per minute, which is vivid and impossible to check. Here are the underlying areas.
1.11 × an annual Amazon loss
1,000,000 ha is bigger than 4 of the 7 references on this page.
Reference figures are measurements and are rounded; the unit conversion behind them is exact.
| Reference | Size | Yours ÷ theirs | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Central Park | 341 ha | 2,933× | |
| New Forest | 56,600 ha | 17.7× | |
| Yellowstone | 898,300 ha | 1.11× | |
| annual Amazon loss | 900,000 ha | 1.11× | Roughly 900 000 ha in recent years |
| Wales | 2,077,900 ha | 0.481× | |
| annual global tree cover loss | 22,000,000 ha | 1/22 | About 22 million hectares |
| Amazon rainforest | 550,000,000 ha | 1/550 |
Worth knowing
- Global tree cover loss runs at roughly 22 million hectares a year — an area the size of the United Kingdom, though much of it regrows.
- The Amazon has lost about 17% of its original extent since 1970. Ecologists put the tipping point for large-scale dieback near 20–25%.
Frequently asked
How much rainforest is lost each year?
Primary tropical forest loss has run around 3.7 million hectares a year recently — about 10 football pitches a minute, which is where that figure comes from.
Is all tree cover loss deforestation?
No. The 22 million hectare figure includes managed plantation harvest and fire. Permanent conversion of primary forest is a smaller and more serious subset.
How to read this
Loss figures vary substantially year to year and between monitoring programmes; these are representative recent values.