Anthropogenic modification of forests means only 40% of remaining forests have high ecosystem integrity

Many global environmental challenges, including halting biodiversity loss, reversing land degradation, and climate change, depend on the ecological integrity of forests. I define forest integrity, yet the scale and degree of forest modification remain poorly quantified and mapped. By integrating data on observed and inferred human pressures and an index of lost connectivity, we generate a globally consistent, continuous index of forest condition as determined by the degree of anthropogenic modification. Globally, only 17.4 million km² of forest (40.5%) has high landscape-level integrity (mostly found in Canada, Russia, the Amazon, Central Africa, and New Guinea) and only 2% of this area is in globally designated protected areas. Of the forest inside protected areas, only 56% has high landscape-level integrity. Ambitious policies that prioritize the retention of forest integrity, especially in the most intact areas, are now urgently needed alongside current efforts aimed at halting deforestation and restoring the integrity of forests globally.

H. S. Grantham, A. Duncan, T. D. Evans, K. R. Jones, H. L. Beyer, R. Schuster, J. Walston, J. C. Ray, J. G. Robinson, M. Callow, T. Clements, H. M. Costal, A. DeGemmis, P. R. Elsen, J. Ervin, P. Franco, E. Goldman, S. Goetz, A. Hansen, E. Hofsvang, P. Jantz, S. Jupiter, A. Kang, P. Langhammer, W. F. Laurence, S. Lieberman, M. Linkie, Y. Malhi, S. Maxwell, M. Mendez, R. Mittermeier, N. J. Murray, H. Possingham, J. Radachowsky, S. Saatchi, C. Samper, J. Silverman, A. Shapiro, B. Strassburg, T. Stevens, E. Stokes, R. Taylor, T. Tear, R. Tizard, O. Venter, P. Visconti, S. Wang, J. E. M. Watson