The World Resources Institute has announced that only 20 percent of the world's major forests remain, almost all of them in the far north of Russia and Canada and in Brazil's Amazon region.
Most of the world's forests in other areas are unhealthy, threatened by logging and development or too small and fragmented to sustain full biological systems, the environmental organization said.
Their study involved distributing satellite imagery to thousands of forest experts around the world, who asessed forests' health and threatening conditions.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1997
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