The global forest is shrinking. From year to year, it loses area. It covers all the same today still some 40 million km2. Of which more than half concentrated on just five countries: Russia, Brazil, Canada, the United States and China.
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Let us first recall that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United NationsAgriculture qualifies as forest, a territory which occupies an area of at least 5,000 m2 and on which grow trees more than 5 meters — or able to reach it. Tree cover must be more than 10%. According to this definition, forests — and other land forests — cover some 30% of the land area on our planet.
Slightly more than half of the world’s forests are tropical. And a quarter are boreal forests or polar (taiga). Moreover, nearly 90% of all world forests are primary forests — made up of species native — or modified natural forests — composed of native species with traces of human activity.
The taiga, an immense polar forest
The taiga forms a kind of ring around the north pole. It extends over 15 million km2 which are distributed mainly in Eurasia and a little in North America. It is home to many animal species such as the wolf, the brown bear, the grizzly or the reindeer or caribou and momentum.
The Amazon rainforest: a treasure trove of biodiversity
The Amazon rainforest would still extend over nearly 6 million km2. This represents no less than 400 billion trees! Nearly two-thirds of its surface is in Brazil, but it also touches eight other countries, including France, through Guyana. And she is registered Unesco World Heritage. Unfortunately, this treasure is threatened by the deforestation . Between August 2015 and July 2016 for example, it is not less than 8,000 km2 of forest that have been destroyed.
The forests of Congo, Canada and Daintree
The tropical forest of the Congo Basin extends over some 2 million km2. It too suffers from deforestation. However, it is home to some emblematic species such as the forest elephant, the gorillawhere the bonobos .
The continental coastal forest of British Columbia (Canada), meanwhile, extends over nearly 140,000 km2. It is the largest set of temperate and humid forestsof the world.
The Daintree forest (Australia) only extends over some 9,000 km2. But it seems to be the oldest in the world. It would indeed approach 125 million years.
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