Iran Press/ America: Researchers say new leaders have prioritized the environment, with tree losses in the Brazilian Amazon down by a huge 39%.
However, increased tree felling and fires in Bolivia, Laos, and Nicaragua wiped out many of these gains.
Global losses were up by a quarter, mainly due to forest fires in Canada.
The intense, long-lasting wildfires that burned across Canada drove five times more tree losses in 2023 than in the previous year.
Fires in northern forest areas have a huge impact on the overall global picture of tree cover loss, according to analysts from the University of Maryland's GLAD lab and the World Resources Institute (WRI) which publish annual data on forest felling.
However, for these researchers, the intentional clearing of mature rainforests in tropical regions is the most important measure when it comes to climate change.
In locations like the Amazon, these primary forests store vast amounts of carbon critical to the world's efforts to limit the rise in global temperatures.
These tropical regions have also been the main focus of human-driven deforestation over the past five decades.
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