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Brazil’s satellites did not detect anything alarming. Yet down on the ground, the trees were dying. Slowly but surely, a stretch of protected forest the size of New York City was drying out… When Brazilian authorities responded to anonymous complaints about the destruction last year, they found troves of empty herbicide containers… The land was owned by Claudecy Oliveira Lemes, a rancher who has supplied some of the world’s biggest meatpackers… What separates Mr. Lemes from the thousands of other loggers and ranchers who have razed stretches of the Amazon and other forests across Brazil is that he employed what the authorities say is a dangerous new technique: chemical deforestation. In other words, he used chemicals, instead of chain saws, to clear the forest.

At the 2021 United Nations Climate Conference in Glasgow, 145 nations made a pledge to halt and reverse deforestation and land degradation by 2030. Almost three years later, the call for transformative action is ringing hollow… Overall, the world is 45% off its deforestation targets, and, in a frustrating twist, forest-loss levels have risen above a 2018-2020 baseline since the pledge… Efforts to eliminate deforestation from supply chains have largely been voluntary corporate commitments. While these pledges have steered the conversation and helped the development of traceable supply chains, it’s clear that they aren’t enough to deliver results at a sufficient pace. That’s why policy experts and forest advocates alike have been pushing for demand-side regulation — essentially a ban on the import of deforestation-linked goods — in consumer countries for years.

Scientists assessing dangers posed to the world’s trees have revealed that more than a third of species are facing extinction in the wild. The number of threatened trees now outweighs all threatened birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians put together, according to the latest update to the official extinction red list. The news was released in Cali, Colombia, where world leaders are meeting at the UN biodiversity summit, COP 16, to assess progress on a landmark rescue plan for nature… Trees are at risk in 192 countries, with clearing land for farming and logging the biggest threat and, in temperate regions, pests and diseases. Well-known trees such as magnolias are among the most threatened, with oaks, maple and ebonies also at risk…

A €20m fall in this year’s allocation from the Government for the forestry sector shows that the industry is heading in the wrong direction as farmers turn away from planting trees, experts have warned… A huge amount of forestry planted during a boom period in the 1980s and 1990s is now maturing and will greatly increase supply over the coming 10 years. But the reduction in the annual budget of the Government’s forestry programme from €110m to €91m was a major worry for the future health of the sector – because it suggested farmers are now turning away from commercial tree planting… The industry is worried about the falling planting rate, as it undermines the long-term viability of Ireland’s timber sector.

In the 1980s, one of the most notorious mass extinction events in modern times occurred on a hilltop in coastal Ecuador. Ninety species of plants unique to the region went extinct when the last cloud forests of the Centinela range were cleared for agriculture. The cautionary tale has long been used to advocate for the conservation of rainforests. But did this event actually occur? In a new study published in Nature Plants, an international team of botanists has refuted the claim. After years of scouring natural history museums, biodiversity databases, and the slopes of Centinela, the researchers found no proof of any extinctions. Instead, they discovered abundant evidence that Centinela’s flora lives on in the scattered remaining fragments of coastal Ecuador’s forests.

Wildfires in Brazil have swept through an area the size of Switzerland, a level of destruction that will take decades to recover, if it ever does, according to a new satellite assessment… The area that burned between January and mid-October 2024 represents an 846% increase over the same period in 2023… Deforestation in the Amazon usually begins with chainsaws. Wet, fallen trees are left lying on the ground until they’re dry enough to set afire. They’re not even used for lumber. Now with the forest drying out from drought, lawbreakers seeking to create more pasture may be skipping the expensive, labor-intensive step of felling trees. A lighter and a few gallons of gasoline suffice to start a blaze.

Consumers and celebrities around the world covet it for its warm, earthy and musky scent. But Australian sandalwood’s popularity has come at more than just a hefty cost to the wallet, with some scientists warning the species is at risk of extinction in the wild… In Western Australia, the primary commercial harvest operator is the Forest Products Commission, which manages the harvest of up to 2,500 tonnes of wild Australian sandalwood each year. Australian sandalwood is also harvested in plantations, but the warnings from conservationists are focused on trees found in the wild and long-standing concerns that there is insufficient natural regeneration of the species… “The evidence is we have less sandalwood in the wild than probably ever in its evolutionary history,” Prof. Kingsley Dixon said.

Is Ireland really all that green? Ecologically speaking, the answer is no… Earlier this month, the country’s Environmental Protection Agency published a report that rated Ireland’s environmental health as “poor.” Thousands of years ago, 80 percent of Ireland was forested. Trees now cover just 11 percent of the country, one of the lowest rates in Europe, and are predominately nonnative Sitka spruce. Native trees cover just 1 percent of the land. Biodiversity is also suffering. Ireland may have millions of acres of brilliant green fields dotted with cows and sheep, but that land is largely grass monocultures… Eoghan Daltun rewilded his land in West Cork into a temperate rainforest and wants more of Ireland to do the same. [A subscription to the New York Times is required to access this full story]