The tropics lost a record-shattering amount of primary rainforest in 2024 driven largely by fires, according to new data from UMD and GFW.

It started off as a side project. Global Forest Watch (GFW) user, JD*, had a day job at the time — and still does — working with NGOs on forest and land use issues in Malaysia. JD was frustrated with the difficulty of finding reliable maps of forest cover for the country. Much of the […]

By Rachael Petersen, Samantha Gibbes and Mikaela Weisse Sarawak, a Malaysian state on the historically richly forested island of Borneo suffers from high rates of deforestation, but understanding this dynamic is made difficult by government secrecy and lack of transparency. Official maps of logging, oil palm and wood fiber concessions for Sarawak are hard to come by; the government does not […]