“Deforestation in Colombia appears to have declined in 2025, with notable reductions in several departments that have historically struggled with forest loss.

An estimated 36,280 hectares (89,650 acres) of forest were lost during the first three quarters of the year, a 25% drop from the 48,500 hectares (about 119,850 acres) recorded over the same period in 2024, according to the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies (IDEAM), a government agency.”

From Mongabay.

“China completed about 8.47 million hectares of land greening in 2025, according to a media release from the National Forestry and Grassland Administration.

This included afforestation on nearly 3.6 million hectares, with the rest achieved through the restoration of degraded grasslands, the release said on Thursday as the administration’s annual work conference continues.

To date, the country’s forest coverage rate has increased to 25.09 percent, and its forest stock volume has reached almost 21 billion cubic meters, it revealed.

During the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), China accomplished a total of 36.6 million hectares of land greening, including 12.3 million hectares of afforestation, according to the administration. During this time, an average of almost 3.1 million hectares of degraded grassland were restored annually. The consistent efforts in restoring degraded grassland have helped maintain the comprehensive vegetation coverage of grasslands above 50 percent.

The release especially highlighted remarkable progress in desertification control. Over the past five years, the country managed to treat roughly 10.1 million hectares of desertified land and also close off almost 1.9 million hectares of such land to prevent deterioration, it stated.”

From China Daily.

“The American chestnut (Castanea dentata) was a foundational forest canopy species in eastern North America until an imported fungal blight (caused by Cryphonectria parasitica) rendered it functionally extinct across its native range. Biotechnological approaches, such as the Darling 54 (D54) transgenic line, have potential for future restoration of American chestnut, but field-based evaluations of blight tolerance have been limited. Field-based evaluation is slowed by the many years it takes for seedlings to grow to saplings, then to full-fledged trees. Current regulatory restrictions also constrain the testing of transgenic chestnuts to just within permitted orchards. This research reports on a two-year field trial of four- to five-year-old, T3- and T4-generation transgenic D54(+) saplings and their non-transgenic full-siblings in a permitted orchard in southern Maine. The field trial deployed a randomized block design with wild-type American chestnut and Chinese chestnut (Castanea mollissima) controls. In the two years, 261 trees were branch-inoculated in three replicates with EP-155, a highly virulent strain of the fungal blight. D54(+) trees consistently outperformed their negative siblings and outperformed Chinese chestnut in a limited comparison. To our knowledge, this is the first multi-year field trial of fungal blight inoculations comparing advanced generation D54 families. This field-based evaluation of blight tolerance in D54 transgenic chestnuts contributes to the goal of restoring this iconic species to its eastern North American native range.”

From bioRxiv.

“China’s biggest tree-planting effort is the Great Green Wall in the country’s arid and semi-arid north. Started in 1978, the Great Green Wall was created to slow the expansion of deserts. Over the last five decades, it has helped grow forest cover from about 10% of China’s area in 1949 to more than 25% today — an area equivalent to the size of Algeria. Last year, government representatives announced the country had finished encircling its biggest desert with vegetation, but that it will continue planting trees to keep desertification in check…

Collectively, China’s ecosystem restoration initiatives account for 25% of the global net increase in leaf area between 2000 and 2017.

But regreening has dramatically changed China’s water cycle, boosting both evapotranspiration and precipitation.”

From Live Science.