SA is a top culprit in world forest-felling

SOUTH Africa ranks among the 30 countries that lost more tree cover than anywhere else on Earth in 2013.

In a new study released this week, scientists from Global Forest Watch collected 400 000 new high-resolution images of the Earth’s surface.

This was used to map the world’s forests, with their findings showing that, overall, the world cut 18 million hectares of forest – twice the size of Portugal – that year.

Russia, Brazil, Canada, US, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo recorded the most treecover loss of all.

Tree cover loss is a measure of the total loss of all trees within a specific area driven by human-induced deforestation, forest fires, tree-clearing for agriculture, logging, and harvesting; and includes tree mortality. In the report, South Africa is ranked in 30th place, with 962kha of tree-cover loss.