New Guinea Rainforest

The New Guinea Rainforest covers much of the island of New Guinea, shared by Papua New Guinea and the Indonesian provinces of Papua, and is described as the third largest rainforest on Earth after the Amazon and the Congo Basin, stretching across roughly 73 million hectares. Despite the island covering only about one percent of the world's land surface, its rainforest is estimated to hold around seven percent of the world's species, an extraordinary concentration of biodiversity shaped by New Guinea's rugged, largely inaccessible mountainous interior. The forest also functions as a major carbon sink, storing an estimated 6.9 billion tonnes of carbon in its trees and soils. Much of the rainforest remains remote and sparsely surveyed, and conservation organizations work directly with local communities, including in Papua New Guinea's Milne Bay Province, to protect it from logging and land conversion.