Find what works for forests, anywhere.
ActSmall · Forest is a free, map-first forest portal. Click any country to see live forest cover, primary-forest extent, the share of land legally protected, and one concrete action that fits the place. A small source-cited library lives alongside for anyone who wants to understand the forest they’re looking at — old growth especially. No accounts. No tracking. Nothing for sale.
Information only.
This site is not forestry advice, identification certification, or guidance for working forest land. For any active operation, follow your regional regulator and qualified local foresters. Where to start →
What the map shows
Forest cover (FAO via World Bank)
Country shading from FAO’s Global Forest Resources Assessment, served via the World Bank Open Data API: forest area as a share of total land area, latest published year per country.
Forest cover change
Five-year percentage-point change in forest area for every country, computed from the same FAO/World Bank time series — coloured darkest where forest is being lost fastest.
Protected terrestrial area (WDPA)
Share of each country’s land in legally protected areas (IUCN categories I–VI), from UNEP-WCMC’s World Database on Protected Areas via World Bank.
Intact-forest-landscape extent
Country-level remaining intact-forest-landscape extent from the IFL Mapping Project (University of Maryland / Greenpeace / WRI / Transparent World) — a closer proxy for old growth than total forest cover.
National policy context, where available
Where a country has a published federal mature-and-old-growth inventory, a national protection percentage, or an active forest-policy lever, the recommendation card surfaces a short, source-cited domestic snapshot and one specific policy ask already written. Seeded for the US and Canada today; the EU Deforestation Regulation, Brazilian Amazon protection, Indonesia’s moratorium framework, Australia’s native-forest reviews, and equivalent fights elsewhere are on the open backlog — submit one for a country we are missing.
One next step per country
Every country click surfaces one concrete action that fits the local situation: defend remaining old growth, cut a deforestation driver, restore degraded land, or write to your representative. Sources cited.
Why forests, why now
Most of what humans depend on — clean water, breathable air, stable climate, food security, predictable fire seasons — rests on intact forests. Forests regulate watersheds. Forests are the largest above-ground carbon stores on Earth. Forests house roughly four-fifths of terrestrial biodiversity. Forests are where roughly a billion people get part of their food security. The other ActSmall topics — water, air, fire, food — each touch forests in one direction; this is the underneath.
Old growth in particular carries a special weight. Most environmental damage is reversible on human timescales: a polluted river can be cleaned, a depleted aquifer can be (slowly) refilled, a cleared field can be re-meadowed. Old growth cannot be repaired. It can only be protected, or replaced, and replacement takes longer than every person alive will live. This is the forest topic the next generation will most directly inherit, for better or worse, from decisions being made now.
From recognition to action, in one click
Click into any country and the map picks the single highest-leverage thing you can do for it right now, based on the live data:
Defend remaining old growth
If a country still holds large intact-forest landscapes and recent loss is rising, the headline action surfaces vetted operators working with local and indigenous communities to defend specific stands. We surface the names; we do not nudge you toward an outcome.
Cut a deforestation driver
If forest cover is falling fast in a tropical country, the action shifts to the consumption drivers documented to be doing it — soy and beef from cleared Amazon, palm oil from cleared rainforest, cheap pulp from primary boreal stands — with links to the FSC, Rainforest Alliance, or specific brand campaigns active for that geography.
Restore degraded land
If forest cover is low and the land is suitable, the action shifts to restoration: the Society for Ecological Restoration’s standards, native-species nurseries, regional reforestation initiatives. Restoration is slow and the results outlive whoever starts them; that is exactly the point.
Plant something locally
If you are on the map and not sure what to do, plant a tree appropriate for your soil and climate — one tree, in one yard, this year. The map links to your regional native-species guides and tree-planting non-profits.
Email a representative
Where the country has an active forest-policy fight and a public parliamentary or agency channel, the primary action carries a one-click Email a rep button with the actual data point and a short civil ask already written. Seeded today for the US (Executive Order 14072 mature-and-old-growth rulemaking), Canada (provincial primary-forest deferrals), and the EU (the Deforestation Regulation file). For other countries the recommender uses the representatives index, which lists official ministry and parliament channels we have verified.
Open a data gap
If a country has no reliable data behind it, the next-step action is… opening that data. We link to OpenStreetMap forest tagging projects and to citizen-science platforms (iNaturalist, Forest Watcher) so the gap that’s in front of you becomes the thing you can fill.
Below every primary action sit two small affordances: 30-day reminder downloads a calendar event so the commitment outlives the moment; Tell two people uses your share sheet so reach multiplies without friction. Nothing is tracked, gamified, or sent anywhere.
And a library, alongside
The map answers where and what next. The library answers why and how — for anyone who wants to actually understand the forest they’re looking at, especially the old-growth stands that the map flags as worth defending.
- Primers. What old growth is. How to identify it in your region. How forestry practices vary from best to worst. What the underground fungal networks do. What a forest’s “library” of dead wood is for. Roughly six pages, growing.
- Country snapshots. Real places, current conditions, sourced. Where old growth still exists; where it is being lost; what is being done.
- Project cards. Single-page printable PDFs. Find your biggest tree this Saturday. Become an iNaturalist contributor. Map a small wood. Things a 14-year-old can do anywhere with no special equipment, that produce a real data point.
Plain English, source-cited, published under CC BY-SA 4.0 — copy, translate, adapt, and republish freely; please keep the source citations intact.
How the data stays current
A small scheduled job pulls public feeds once a day — FAO’s Global Forest Resources Assessment via the World Bank Open Data API for forest area, UNEP-WCMC’s World Database on Protected Areas via World Bank for protection share, and the Intact Forest Landscapes Mapping Project for the old-growth proxy — normalises each one, and serves the result to everyone who visits. The same job revalidates every link the recommendation card might surface, so dead links are caught the next morning rather than by the visitor. Your browser only ever talks to our own server for the data layers. Result: same-day freshness, deliberately tiny running costs, and no upstream API gets polled more than its publication rhythm warrants.
Read more in methodology. Source code lives in a private repository — the deployable artefact is what you can inspect.
What this site is not
It is not a foundation, a fundraiser, or a campaign. There is no donation we are asking you to commit to, no membership, no subscription, no mailing list. There are no advertisements, no third-party trackers, no analytics, and no captured visitor data. We do not measure engagement; we will not start.
It is not exhaustive. The world is large and our editorial bandwidth is small. When the data behind a page is uncertain, we say so. When we do not know, we do not write a primer.
It is not a substitute for working with qualified local foresters, ecologists, indigenous land stewards, regulators, and the people who actually live near a forest. Those people are the experts. This site exists to make their work easier to find and respect.