The world’s forests vanished at an unprecedented rate in 2024, with fires emerging as the biggest threat to tropical rainforests for the first time in recorded history. The loss was particularly severe in the Amazon, where extreme drought turned typically fire-resistant rainforests into tinderboxes. Last year’s forest destruction wiped out an area the size of Panama – about 6.7 million hectares of pristine tropical forest. That’s roughly 18 soccer fields disappearing every minute, nearly double the loss seen in 2023. “The signals in these data are particularly frightening,” says Matthew Hansen, who leads forest monitoring at the University of Maryland. … Continue reading Global Forest Loss Hits 6.7M Hectares in 2024 as Amazon Fires Surge