The world's remaining ancient forests are vital to the future of the planet. Forests are home to two thirds of all known species of land plants and animals. They are also home to thousands of indigenous cultures that rely on forests for food, water and the necessities of life. Forests also play a key role in regulating local and global climate. They are vital to the future of life on Earth.

This Greenpeace map is the first global assessment of remaining tracts of intact forest landscapes larger than 500 sq. km that are not fragmented by infrastructure, such as roads, settlements, waterways, pipelines, power lines etc. These tracts are located within the forest vegetation zone and are mostly forested but also contain swamps and other non-forested ecosystems which are without significant visible signs of human impact such as logging, burning or other forms of forest clearing.

There are three reasons to focus on large tracts. First, only sufficiently large areas can conserve populations of large animals in their natural state and survive natural disturbance dynamics such as fires and storms. Second, large intact areas can serve as references to better understand and manage already degraded or fragmented areas (which make up the vast majority of forest landscapes). Third, large intact areas are often comparatively cheap to conserve, as they tend to rely on remoteness as their main guarantee of protection.

The map identifies forest landscapes which include non-forested areas. The reason for mapping landscapes instead of individual ecosystems is that the forest is a natural mosaic of integrated ecosystems, including forests, wetlands, rivers, lakes, and other treeless areas. Separating these ecosystems would not only be difficult but also artificial.

This assessment is based on the most up-to-date high-resolution satellite imagery and a consistent set of global criteria which allows for the first time direct comparison of the state of forests throughout the world. The finest-scale infrastructure maps and the latest available satellite imagery (2000-2004) were used. The goal of this project was to find and record forest landscapes with a minimum of human disturbance. Two things must be stressed: the boundary of human influence is often diffuse and areas without any human disturbance no longer remain. In this study, an area was considered to be in an intact, natural state if it showed no signs of infrastructure, industrial forest harvesting during the last 30-50 years, mining, land clearing or other essential human impacts. Traces of low-intensity human disturbance (such as hunting, pollution, forest grazing) did not lead to exclusion from the intact forest landscapes.

This map of large intact natural forest landscapes is an important component of a general conservation strategy, but it is not in itself sufficient. Many ecosystems have already been disturbed to the point where only small fragments remain. Mapping of these remnants was outside the scope of this study but this in no way precludes their potential assessment as having high conservation values and is therefore an important task for future examinations.

This map was prepared by Greenpeace with the participation of the Biodiversity Conservation Center (Russia), International Socio-Ecological Union, Forest Watch Indonesia and Luonto-Liitto (Finnish Nature League). Additionally, the following publications were used as references: "The Last Intact Forest Landscapes of Northern European Russia" (Greenpeace and GFW, 2001); "Remaining Wildlands of the Northern Forests" (GFW, 2002, unreviewed draft); and "Atlas of Russia's Intact Forest Landscapes" (GFW, 2002).

This website (www.intactforests.org) provides detailed maps, statistics and other related information. For more general information see www.greenpeace.org/forestmaps