Outside of the Amazon: The World's Largest Rainforests

By Erika Pietrzak, June 24 , 2025

There are hundreds of thousands of acres of rainforest land across the world and on almost every continent. Deforestation, natural resource extraction, wildlife harm, and pollution threaten the future of these ecosystems, and we must do everything we can to protect them.

Source: World Wildlife Federation

Everyone has heard of the Amazon Rainforest and many know about the deforestation and climate issues that have caused a significant loss in biodiversity, including extinctions. However, there are hundreds of thousands of acres of rainforest land across the world and in almost every continent. It is critical these rainforests receive the same amount of attention as the Amazon to prevent their complete annihilation. Deforestation, natural resource extraction, wildlife harm, and pollution threaten the future of these systems and we must do everything we can to protect them.

Congo Basin Rainforest

The second largest rainforest in the world is the Congo Basin Rainforest. With five hundred million acres spanning across six countries with over 150 million citizens and 150 ethnic groups living within its borders, the region is a hotspot for biodiversity.

Encompassing diverse landscapes, the rainforest includes rivers, dense forest, savannah, and wetlands, including the world’s largest peatlands. This thriving web of trees and plants absorb massive amounts of carbon, making it the largest remaining tropical carbon sink. Seventy percent of Africa’s tropical forests are also located in the Congo Basin, with numerous critically endangered species calling the area home. Thirty percent of the tropical plants found in the Congo Basin are found nowhere else on the earth.

The Congo Basin is home to one-fifth of Earth’s living species, including at least 400 mammalian species, one thousand species of birds, and 700 species of fish. However, many populations of birds in the area are on the decline as illegal wildlife trade threatens their survival.

Sixty million people directly rely on the Congo Basin. Coupled with unsustainable population growth in the region, this may prove detrimental for the rainforest if not properly managed. Unmanaged poaching and deforestation, as well as the extraction of the many natural resources located in the Basin including petroleum and minerals, presents an ominous future for the region. A lack of capacity for oversight and effective policing, along with ivory poaching and bushmeat hunting, have resulted in wildlife populations being wiped out at alarming rates. Elephants, pangolins, and parrots are at particular risk from these practices while monkey, antelope, and gorilla populations are mainly threatened by the unsustainable population growth that requires increasingly large stocks of bushmeat to sustain themselves without humanitarian intervention. At current rates, without intervention the Congo Basin will be completely wiped out by 2050.

Source: World Wildlife Federation

Australiasian Rainforest 

The Australiasian Rainforest in New Guinea is the third largest in the world and the largest in the Asia-Pacific region. Encompassing 65 percent of Papua New Guinea to the east, the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Irian Jaya to the west, and parts of Northern Australia and neighboring islands, the Australiasian Rainforest includes a diverse group of countries. Some of the major rivers in this region run through this rainforest, including the Asmat and Mamberano rivers in Indonesia and the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea. In 2020, the rainforest included almost 90 million hectares.

The rainforest is also culturally rich with some of the most isolated traditional forest dwellers in the world. In New Guinea alone there are over 800 languages spoken. The rainforest houses the rich traditions and knowledge systems of Indigenous peoples who have lived in these ecosystems for over a millennia. In particular, the Kuku Yalanji culture is built around a deep respect for nature and an intimate knowledge of the rainforest’s cycles that is passed down through the generations.

The Australiasian Rainforest has less than one percent of the world’s landmass, but five percent of the world’s animal and plant species, two-third of which are only found in New Guinea. Interestingly, the species in the Australiasian Rainforest are more similar to Australian species than Asia due to New Guinea’s historic landmass connection to the Australian continent. The rainforest has as many bird and plant species as Australia, despite being less than one-tenth of the size of Australia. Almost all of the existing birds of paradise and tree kangaroos live in the rainforest, including the world’s smallest parrot. The rainforest is also home to some other wildlife marvels, including 760 bird species found nowhere else in the world and a butterfly the size of a bird with a wingspan of almost a foot long.

Saving the Rainforests

The rainforests have withstood cyclones, earthquakes, and landslides since their inception– it is human determinants that endanger the future of the rainforest. Logging, wildlife trade, mining, and agricultural plantations, especially oil palm plantations, regularly threaten these remote ecosystems. Corruption, weak environmental enforcements, and lack of transparency exacerbate these declines while illegal deforestation runs rampant under the guise of development. Unsustainable practices persist unchecked in rainforest regions with significant timber transported to China, including timber stands harvested unsustainably throughout Indigenous areas, destroying their land.

The world’s rainforests are dwindling at alarming rates because of human action and inaction. While we exploit the resources and wildlife that these ecosystems have to offer, they cry for our help as we continue to tear them apart. Immediate and drastic action is needed if we want to save these precious ecosystems and their inhabitants. International action and lifestyle changes must occur in countries outside of rainforests as well as countries within them to relieve the pressure on tropical nations to supply tropical goods to the world by over-exploiting their resources.

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