Susan Minnemayer and Lars Laestadius contributed to a previous version of this article.Intact forest landscapes, or vast stretches of unbroken forested wilderness, are uniquely valuable because their scale and ecological integrity allow ecosystem services and functions to operate as a complete, self-sustaining system in ways that smaller, fragmented forests cannot. They regulate temperature and rainfall across continents, store huge amounts of carbon and provide habitat and migration pathways to support viable populations of native species. For many Indigenous Peoples, intact forest landscapes provide secure sanctuaries where traditional stewardship and ways of life can continue without disruption from outside. But they’re also under threat. According to the latest data on Global Nature Watch (formerly Global Forest Watch), the extent of the world’s intact forest landscapes decreased by 15% (195 million hectares) between 2000 and 2025. This is an area roughly the size of Mexico. Furthermore, intact forest landscapes are shrinking at an increasing rate globally, from an average reduction of 7.1 million hectares per year between 2000 and 2013 to an average of 9.4 million hectares per year between 2014 and 2025. Increasingly, human-caused fires[1] and mining, drilling and exploration are prominent drivers of the reduction in the extent of intact forest landscapes. Between 2020 and 2025, fires were the leading cause, accounting for nearly 40% of the reduction in their extent. If the trend doesn’t reverse, the world could lose much of its remaining unbroken forest tracts this century, posing problems for nature, the climate and human well-being. How are intact forest landscapes defined?Intact forest landscapes are patches of forests and natural treeless ecosystems that show no signs of significant human activity or habitat fragmentation (as detected by satellite imagery) and are large enough to maintain all native biodiversity. Some forms of low-intensity or historic human disturbances, such as scattered, small-scale shifting cultivation and low-intensity selective logging may be included in an intact forest landscape if the disturbance is too small to be detected by satellites.In order to ensure that areas designated as intact forest landscapes are large enough to provide refuge for wide-ranging species, researchers used three criteria in addition to the requirement of no visible, significant human-caused disturbances: 1) minimum area of 50,000 hectares; 2) minimum patch width of 10 km; and 3) minimum corridor/appendage width of 2 km. A portion of an intact forest landscape, or in some cases an entire patch, may no longer be considered an intact forest landscape if these criteria are no longer met due to human-caused alteration or fragmentation. For example, if a road is built across an intact forest landscape patch that causes the remaining patches to no longer meet the criteria, the entire patch would no longer be considered an intact forest landscape. As a result, that intact forest landscape area is lost and the total global area decreases. For each update of the global intact forest landscape map, researchers only assess areas currently designated as intact forest landscapes. Therefore, this methodology does not take into account forest regeneration and assumes that once lost, intactness cannot be regained.Where and Why Are Intact Forests Becoming Fragmented?Increasingly, human-caused fires Countries with the largest remaining areas of intact forest landscapes are found primarily in boreal and tropical regions. These regions also experienced the largest reduction in intact forest landscape area over the past 25 years. Only small areas of intact forest landscapes remain in temperate regions due to extensive commercial logging and agricultural activities prior to the year 2000. The leading drivers of reduction in intact forest landscapes have changed over the past two and a half decades. From 2000 to 2013, timber harvesting was the primary cause of reduction, especially in the tropics, southern boreal and temperate zones, followed by agricultural expansion, particularly in the tropics. Human-caused fires were the third-largest driver, primarily in the northern boreal region. Yet since 2020, fire has become the leading driver. The proportion of intact forest landscape reduction driven by human-caused fires adjacent to infrastructure, agricultural areas, and logging or mining sites has nearly doubled, from 21% to nearly 40%. The largest increase in fire-driven reduction in intact forest landscape area occurred in North America. In South America, which ranked second, fire surpassed agriculture as the leading cause of reduction. The increased impact from fires is due to a combination of factors: fragmentation and encroachment into intact forests from agricultural expansion, logging, mining, roads and other infrastructure have led to an increased probability of fire ignition, while at the same time climate change has fueled hotter and drier conditions that enable larger, more frequent and more severe fires. Timber harvest (including clearcut and selective logging), the second-largest driver since 2020, has remained a prominent cause of intact forest landscape reduction, accounting for roughly 20% of total reduction during this period. It remained the primary driver of intact forest landscape reduction in Africa, Southeast Asia, and temperate Eurasia. The average annual intact forest landscape reduction due to timber harvest increased in boreal Eurasia, where clearcuts (a type of logging where all the trees in a specific area are cut down at the same time) expanded into northern forests. This expansion appeared to be linked to oil and gas infrastructure, which can provide access routes for timber extraction in areas where logging road construction had previously been prohibitively expensive.The proportion of intact forest landscape reduction caused by mining, drilling and exploration has increased substantially since the early 2000s, from 12% to nearly 19%, and is now the third-largest driver. The largest increases were found in boreal forests in Russia, linked to the expansion of oil and gas production in eastern Siberia, followed by South America, largely due to expansion of gold mining. As of 2025, Canada, Russia and Brazil had the largest area of remaining intact forest landscapes, making up over 65% of the global total. However, these countries also experienced the largest reduction from 2000 to 2025. Russia experienced the largest reduction in intact forest landscape area between 2000 to 2025, with a decrease of 53 million hectares, followed by Brazil (33 million hectares reduction) and Canada (29 million hectares reduction). Romania had the largest percent decline, losing all of its intact forest landscape area by 2013, followed by Paraguay, where the intact forest landscape area decreased by 81% by 2025. The Solomon Islands, Laos, Central African Republic, Nicaragua, Honduras, Liberia and Equatorial Guinea lost over half of their intact forest landscape area by 2025. However, not all countries experienced a decline in intact forest landscape extent. Although they contain a relatively small area, Cuba and Japan had almost no change in their extent of intact forest landscapes from 2000 to 2025. The Problem with Losing Forest IntactnessIntact forest landscapes are unique and irreplaceable. With many forests around the world being degraded and lost, intact forest landscapes offer important areas of high forest integrity. Intactness cannot easily be regained — once altered, complex assemblages of biodiversity are extremely challenging to restore. For example, extending new roads into remote forest areas facilitates human access, which can lead to cascading changes: wildlife habitat loss, unregulated hunting, increased human settlement and population density, forest clearing from logging, forest loss from agricultural expansion, fires, and other changes that degrade forests and may eventually convert vast forest areas to other land uses. Intact forests also offer a unique opportunity to mitigate two of the greatest environmental challenges Earth faces: climate change and species extinction.Multiple measures of forest healthVarious methodologies exist for designating forests that have significant ecological value. These include High Conservation Value (HCV) Forests, High Carbon Stock Forests and Forest Landscape Integrity, in addition to intact forest landscapes. Although these designations can all be used to identify forests that are important to protect, they differ with respect to their specific definitions, requirements and methodologies, and they each have strengths and limitations depending on the context and purpose for which they are used.In some cases, these measures can be complementary. For example, the Forest Landscape Integrity Index measures the degree to which a forest’s structure, composition and function are free from modification by humans, and can show forest degradation on a spectrum. This can provide information about the variation in integrity outside the most intact areas. Meanwhile, intact forest landscapes are a binary classification, and the forests found within them have high integrity values.Climate change mitigation and adaptationIntact forest landscapes are critical for sequestering and storing carbon. Forests within remaining intact forest landscapes had an average annual net sink of -1.62 gigatonnes CO2 equivalent per year from 2001-2025, making up over 30% of the average annual global net carbon sink from forests. On average, tropical intact forests store three times as much above-ground carbon as non-intact tropical forests. Meanwhile, northern boreal forests have huge soil carbon stores. While they store less above-ground carbon than their tropical counterparts, boreal intact forests occupy a vast area, making up 38% of global intact forest landscapes in 2025. These intact forest landscapes play an important role in the protection of permafrost, which is critical to preventing the release of climate-warming carbon and methane locked in soils. In addition to climate change mitigation, intact forest landscapes are also critical for climate adaptation. They provide temperature regulation, mitigate flood risk, are water efficient, and show greater resilience to climate fluctuations. Biodiversity protection, restoration and recoveryAdditionally, scientists estimate that tropical forests contain over half of the world’s terrestrial vertebrate species, despite occupying less than one-fifth of global land area. Many of these species depend on intact forests for their survival. Intact forests can also serve as benchmarks of natural ecosystems, guiding forest restoration within surrounding degraded landscapes. Because they retain their original biodiversity, seed sources, seed-dispersing animals and low levels of soil disturbance, they provide the biological and ecological reference points against which restoration success can be measured. Research shows that proximity to intact forest leads to faster and more species-rich natural regeneration in adjacent landscapes. Remaining wildlife populations may be successfully protected within remaining intact forest landscapes and have the potential to increase and repopulate surrounding landscapes. For example, protection of the remaining intact forests was critical for the recent tiger population recovery in Thailand. Maps of intact forest landscapes provide a practical conservation tool to prioritize both protection and landscape-scale restoration planning. In Brazil, the leading cause of deforestation is cutting and burning regions of the Amazon Rainforest for livestock pastures. Agricultural and pasture expansion can drive IFL loss. Photo by Frontpage/Shutterstock How Can We Protect Intact Forest Landscapes?Mitigation of fire risk As climate change continues to fuel more frequent and intense forest fires, fire risk mitigation, prevention and rapid response will become increasingly important strategies to ensure the protection of intact forest landscapes. Because human activities that encroach and fragment intact forests increase their susceptibility to fire, establishing effective protection that maintains the intactness of these critical ecosystems is essential.Policy recognitionThe importance of intact forest landscapes has been recognized in conservation and climate policy. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), for example, recognizes the value of intact forest landscapes and the need to conserve them in their policy on primary forests, recommending that stakeholders take steps to mitigate threats to intact forests and identify appropriate management options. IUCN policies, which are adopted through multi-stakeholder processes among IUCN member organizations including civil society and governments, guide global conservation priorities. This recognition can help elevate the importance of intact forest landscapes in national and international policy.For international agreements and national forest commitments that aim to halt forest loss — including the New York Declaration on Forests, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the Glasgow Leaders Declaration on Forests and Land Use and the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework — intact forest landscapes offer a measurable benchmark toward goals. They are also important areas to prioritize in order to achieve many of these international targets. Recognizing and supporting Indigenous Peoples’ land rightsResearch shows that the rate of intact forest loss is lower in areas that overlap with Indigenous Peoples’ lands — nearly 60% of intact forest landscapes globally — highlighting local communities’ critical role in managing these forests. Recognizing Indigenous Peoples’ land tenure rights and supporting their efforts to sustainably manage their lands can help avoid further fragmentation of intact forest landscapes. Designating as protected areasResearch shows that designating intact forest landscapes as protected areas has proven effective at limiting their fragmentation. The rate of intact forest landscape reduction within strictly protected areas — IUCN categories I-III — was less than half the rate of reduction outside protected areas between 2000 and 2025. Yet only 37% of remaining intact forests are under some form of legal protection. In 2022, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework set an ambitious global target to conserve and equitably manage at least 30% of global land and water by 2030. Countries should consider intact forest landscapes high-priority candidates when they revise or expand existing protected areas.Increase and innovate finance mechanismsAdditionally, it has long been recognized that more financial resources are needed for forest protection. While climate finance is accessible to countries with large areas of intact forest and low deforestation rates, such as through crediting for the protection of forests as part of the Architecture for REDD+ Transactions (ART) Environmental Excellence Standard, other recent initiatives are exploring new, innovative ways to increase financing. For example, the Tropical Forest Forever Facility is a proposed mechanism that aims to mobilize funding to reward tropical countries for each hectare of standing forests they maintain. The latest intact forest landscape boundaries are now available on Global Nature Watch (formerly Global Forest Watch), along with tools and data to monitor how forest change is affecting them. The authors would like to acknowledge members of the IFL mapping team who contributed to the intact forest landscape data update, including Svetlana Turubanova (University of Maryland), and Anna Komarova, Igor Glushkov and Ilona Zhuravleva (Greenpeace).Editor’s note: This article was originally published in 2017 and updated with the latest data at the time in 2022. It was last updated in June 2026 to reflect the latest data on intact forest landscapes. [1] Fire-related disturbances are considered a factor that can lead to a reduction in intact forest landscape area only when they are likely to be caused by humans, rather than natural causes (such as lightning strikes). The intact forest landscape methodology differentiates natural fires from human-caused fires by assuming that burned areas that are adjacent to areas with human access (e.g., near infrastructure, logging sites or agricultural areas) are likely to be caused by humans.