Which are the 11 Biggest Rainforests in The World? Over the past years, many actions have been taken in order to protect these regions from problems like deforestation, degradation and fragmentation, as they are home to the most vital habitats. In fact, most of the items on the list we’ve created are under the protection of entities like UNESCO, which has developed a project called “World Heritage”, which main objective is to preserve the listed places that are invaluable to our heritage.
Siwabud Veerapaisarn/Shutterstock.com
Rainforests are characterized by high amounts of precipitations, but not all of them are necessarily tropical. In order to obtain the data to make this list, as we couldn’t find any concrete results, we had to search through sites like UNESCO, World Wildlife Fund, among others, and looked for the rainforests with the largest superficies. According to The Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations, forests cover about 36% of the Earth’s land surface, you can also go through our article about the countries with the most forests.
11. Sinharaja
To start off our list, we have the forest reserve Sinharaja, with a total area of 8,864 km2. The reserve located at Sri Lanka is home to 830 endemic species.
10. Sundarbans Reserve Forest
60% of this reserve lies in Bangladesh and the other 40% in India. The total area of the Sundarbans Reserve is of 10,000 km2
9. Kerinci Seblat National Park
This is the biggest of Indonesia’s national parks, covering an area of 13,753 km2.
8. Tongass National Forest
With an area of 67,987 km2, Tongass is the largest national forest in the United States.
7. Great Bear
According to National Geographic, this forest is sometimes considered as the Amazon of the North, occupying a space of 84,984 km2.
Neil Balderson/Shutterstock.com
6. Valdivian
In total, there are five temperate rainforests in the world, the Valdivian is the second largest and the only one in South America. It has a total area of 248,121 km2, most of it in Chile and the other in Argentina.
5. Emerald Edge
At the middle of our list of the biggest rainforests in the world, we have the Emerald Edge, the world’s largest temperate rainforest, with an area of 289,280 km2.
4. Papua New Guinea
In 2002, a study revealed that Papua New Guinea’s rainforest had lost around 8 million hectares since 1972, the total area being reduced to 300,00 km2
3. Borneo Lowland
The Borneo Lowland rainforest is located in South-East Asia, covering a total space of 427,500 km2, part of it in Malaysia and the other in Indonesia.
2. Congo
The Congo rainforest is the second largest in the world and has a total area of 1,780,000 km2.
1. Amazon
Finally, at the end of our 11 Biggest Rainforests in The World, we have The Amazon. It has an area of 5,500,000 km2, about half of it is in Brazil and the other distributed between Bolivia, Ecuador, Suriname, Peru, Venezuela, French Guiana, Colombia and Guyana.
Ammit Jack/Shutterstock.com
