Intact Forest Landscapes

An Intact Forest Landscape (IFL) is a seamless mosaic of forests and associated natural treeless ecosystems with no remotely detected signs of human activity or habitat fragmentation, and that is large enough to maintain all native biodiversity, including viable populations of wide-ranging species. IFLs are critical for reducing the risk of species and cultural extinctions and for mitigating climate change. Natural forests within IFLs store more carbon per unit area than degraded forests and tree plantations, and they continuously remove carbon from the atmosphere. Large IFLs provide habitats for the majority of native species and, due to the absence of roads, limit overhunting and poaching. Many IFL areas are home to forest-dwelling Indigenous cultures, whose livelihoods depend on large, unfragmented wilderness.

The IFL concept and mapping method provide a framework to identify and track remaining forest wildlands, supporting their conservation and ensuring transparency and public engagement. The essence of the IFL method is to use freely available satellite imagery and maps to establish the boundaries of unfragmented forest landscapes and to use these boundaries as a baseline for forest degradation and fragmentation monitoring. The global IFL map for the year 2000 was created under the leadership of Greenpeace, with financial support from the World Resources Institute (WRI), and with technical and expert support from multiple national and international environmental organizations. The IFL map was subsequently updated in 2013, 2016, 2020, and 2025 by the IFL Mapping Team with the support of Greenpeace, WRI, the University of Maryland, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and other organizations.

The IFL concept and change dataset have been widely used in research to understand biodiversity loss, declining forest resilience, and increasing carbon emissions due to forest loss and degradation over the past two decades. The IFL concept has informed forest conservation science and has been incorporated into forest conservation policies, such as the High Conservation Value Forest protection standard of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the IUCN Primary and Intact Forest Landscapes Policy. The IFL dataset was also integrated into the Greenpeace Restricted Areas mapping for transition minerals mining and into a UNEP-WCMC global screening layer of Critical Habitat. The 2020 IFL map was used as a baseline dataset to develop the Joint Research Centre (JRC) Global map of forest types in support of the application of the EU Regulation on deforestation-free supply chains (EUDR).

Conservation of Intact Forest Landscapes is a matter of global importance. Our analysis shows that protected areas are the most effective mechanism for reducing IFL loss, whereas forestry certification systems, such as FSC, are ineffective. New and existing infrastructure development, timber harvesting, and mineral resource extraction should avoid fragmentation of remaining IFLs. Indigenous Peoples’ rights should be recognized and upheld to support their active contribution in preventing the industrial degradation of remaining forest wildlands. Given that the remaining IFL area is far below the "30x30" conservation target of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), IFLs should be prioritized when existing protected area networks are revised and expanded, or when Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures (OECMs) are considered.

The IFL data are freely available for all applications, including commercial use, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0), provided appropriate credit is given to the data source. The IFL Mapping Team is continuing to improve the IFL base map and to provide periodically updates as new data, technologies, and more sophisticated sources of information appears. The latest IFL map update for the year 2025, the analysis of the IFL loss drivers, and the projection of the future IFL area change have been published on Zenodo. Please check News & Updates for information about new map releases.