When we think about the loss of forests, we usually imagine clear-cut deforestation. But across Latin America, another kind of forest loss is also happening…

Habitat surveys are an essential part of the Urban Sloth Project (USP). In these surveys, we make eight squares, each 100 square meters, in the areas where sloths live. We collect GPS locations of the sloths and study the trees in these squares.

Forests are areas of land covered with trees. “Forest” is a very broad term that encompasses many different types of ecosystems, varying degrees of tree density, tree type, and land management. The first fern-like trees appeared on Earth about 380 million years ago, and today forests are the dominant land-based ecosystem on the planet, with 45% of all forests on Earth being found in the tropics.