Fires to clear land lead to near-record loss of tree cover in 2017, study shows
by Reuters
Wednesday, 27 June 2018 07:00 GMT
Tropical forests were lost at a rate equivalent to 40 football fields per minute in 2017, says World Resources Institute
OSLO, June 27 (Reuters) - Burning of forests to make way for farms from the Amazon to the Congo basin caused a loss of global tree cover amounting to an area almost the size of Italy in 2017, an independent forest monitoring network said on Wednesday.
Tree cover loss, mostly in the tropics, totalled 294,000 square kilometres (113,000 square miles) last year, just short of a record 297,000 sq kms in 2016, according to Global Forest Watch, run by the U.S.-based World Resources Institute (WRI).
http://news.trust.org/item/20180627070031-z4mgl
