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• Major findings. Almost half of Earth's original forest cover is gone, much of it destroyed within the past three decades.

• Introduction . Most people who read a newspaper or watch television know that deforestation is a serious problem, particularly in the tropics.

• Why do frontier forests matter?. As large, intact ecosystems, frontier forests differ fundamentally from the fragmented or otherwise modified forests that dominate the landscape today.
• Figure 1. Percent of endangered species threatened, 1996

• What do we know about the world's forests?. Surprisingly, we know very little about the status of the world's forests as a whole.
• Table 1. Total area in original, current, and frontier forest

• WRI's forest frontier assessment. Most of the tremendous amount of information on individual forests that exists is scattered far and wide and buried within the walls of isolated institutions.
• Definitions used in this study

• Falling frontiers. Nearly half of the world's forest has been converted to farms, pastures, and other uses over the past 80 centuries.
• Figure 2. What happened to forests that once covered the Earth?
• Figure 4. Percentage of world's tropical forest cleared between 1960 and 1990
• Frontier forest myths

• Today's threats. Many of the frontier forests that have survived into this century may not make it into the next.
• Figure 6. Wood consumption projected to increase by 56% by 2010

• Destruction's roots . Frequently, governments and industry reap the profits while frontier peoples receive only a sliver of the benefits but bear the environmental brunt of forest mismanagement.
• Table 2. Threats to forest frontiers
• Different ways of ranking countries

• The Frontier Forest Index. WRI's Frontier Forest Index shows that most of the world's nations have already lost, or might soon lose, their last frontier forests.
• Table 3. Frontier forest index
• Table 4. Countries with most of the world's remaining frontier forest
• Table 5. Ten countries with the highest plant biodiversity in their frontier forest

• Regional overviews. Using a geographic information system, WRI has developed a single global database and a preliminary series of regional maps depicting the world's frontier forests.
• Regional overview: North and Central America
• Regional overview: South America
• Regional overview: Africa
• Regional overview: Europe and Russia
• Regional overview: Asia
• Regional overview: Oceania

• The closing frontier: A call to action. The closing frontier: A call to action
• Restoring frontier forest: The Guanacaste example
• A new vision of frontier forest stewardship
• Plan Piloto: Sustainable forest development

• Conclusions. Forest landscapes that are still intact make up about 14 percent of the total forest area of European Russia (including the Ural Mountains).

• Technical Annex. WRI developed a first map of frontier forest areas, assembling in one place unprecedented location-specific information on current and future threats to forest integrity.
• Methodology
• Definitions
• Data caveats and limitations