Top 10 Worst Deforestation Hotspots

Indonesia and Malaysia's palm oil boom has destroyed over half of Borneo's old-growth rainforest, pushing orangutans, pygmy elephants, and thousands of endemic species toward extinction.

Africa's largest tropical forest is losing ground to small-scale agriculture and industrial logging, with the Democratic Republic of Congo accounting for the majority of the continent's tree cover loss.

Often overshadowed by the Amazon, this vast tropical savanna has lost nearly half its native vegetation to soy and cattle production, with far less legal protection than its more famous neighbour.

Rapid expansion of palm oil and pulp plantations has eliminated over half of Sumatra's forests since the 1980s, fragmenting habitat for critically endangered tigers, rhinos, and elephants.

South America's Gran Chaco has one of the highest deforestation rates on Earth, with Paraguay alone losing approximately 300,000 hectares annually to cattle ranching.

Slash-and-burn agriculture has destroyed 90 percent of Madagascar's original forest, endangering lemurs and thousands of plant species found nowhere else on the planet.

Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar are experiencing accelerating forest loss from illegal logging, rubber plantations, and hydropower dam construction along Southeast Asia's vital river system.

Ghana and Ivory Coast have lost over 80 percent of their forest cover, largely driven by cocoa farming that supplies the global chocolate industry, with little old-growth forest remaining.

Canada's vast boreal forest loses approximately one million hectares annually to logging and mining, yet it stores twice as much carbon per hectare as tropical rainforests and receives far less international attention.