The tropics lost 12 million hectares of tree cover in 2018, the fourth-highest annual loss since record-keepingbegan in 2001. Of greatest concern is the disappearance of 3.6 million hectares of primary rainforest, an areathe size of Belgium. The fgures come from updated data from the University of Maryland, released today onGlobal Forest Watch. Old growth, or “primary” tropical rainforests are a crucially important forest ecosystem, containing trees thatcan be hundreds or even thousands of years old. They store more carbon than other forests and areirreplaceable when it comes to sustaining biodiversity. Primary rainforests provide habitat for animals rangingfrom orangutans and mountain gorillas to jaguars and tigers. Once these forests are cut down, they may neverreturn to their original state. For the frst time, new data on the location of primary forests can help distinguish loss of these importantforests from other tree cover loss (read more about the data here). The data reveal that despite a growingnumber of zero-deforestation commitments from governments and companies, primary rainforest loss hitrecord-highs in 2016 and 2017 due to fres and remained above historical levels in 2018.