Africa's forests are vanishing, but it now appears that far fewer trees are gone than was once thought. The reason is that there was not as many trees in the first place as most estimates suggest. In an article in the latest issue of Population and Development Review, Melissa Leach and James Fairhead, two British academics, calculate that Cote d'Ivoire in 1900 probably had 7m-8m hectares. The usual estimate, first made two decades ago, is about 14.5m hectares.