Mapped: how the world is losing its forests to wildfires
Wildfires now destroy twice as much tree cover per year as two decades ago – a crisis fuelled by climate change
TL;DR
- Wildfires consumed over 360 square kilometers of forest daily in 2024, totaling over 134,000 square kilometers by year-end.
- Over the past 24 years, 1.5 million square kilometers of forest have been lost to wildfires.
- The scale, frequency, and intensity of wildfires have surged in recent decades, with four of the five worst years on record occurring since 2020.
- Major fires are now raging across diverse forest types, including the Amazon and Canada's boreal forests.
- Countries like Brazil, Bolivia, Russia, Australia, and Canada have experienced severe fire seasons, exacerbated by heatwaves.
- Thawing permafrost in Arctic regions is expected to increase wildfires.
- Canada's 2023 fire season resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and widespread pollution.
- The Amazon rainforest in Brazil experienced its second-worst fire year on record in 2024.
- Australia's 'black summer' in 2019-2020 saw millions of hectares burned, destroying homes and killing an estimated three billion animals.
- Climate change is creating hotter, drier conditions that extend fire seasons and fuel more extreme blazes.
- Burning forests release stored carbon, accelerating climate change and reducing the atmosphere's ability to regulate temperature.
- Forests in 2023 and 2024 absorbed only a quarter of the CO2 they typically do.
- Indigenous territories like Charagua Iyambae in Bolivia have demonstrated effective fire prevention through early warning systems and land-use policies.
- Experts warn that without significant action, the cycle of warming leading to more fires will accelerate.