Montana Ranks In Bottom Half Of Forest Coverage In U.S.

What's your favorite forest? The Bitterroot? Beaverhead-Deerlodge? Custer? Gump? Whitaker? Gregg?

Personally, I go with Bitterroot National Forest first followed by Forrest Gump. The way Jenny treated him put me firmly in Team Forrest's camp.

via GIPHY

Ok, what was I talking about again?

Land covered by forests, that's right. I recently stumbled upon a map on Reddit's Map Porn page (it's not NSFW) that illustrated how much of each state's land was covered by forests.

Read More: One Of The World's Shortest Rivers Is In Montana

The data stems from a website called Wisevoter, a site that typically delves into political research to aid in voting, but they took time to highlight our beautiful forests in the U.S.

"They cover nearly one-third of the country's landmass, providing vital habitats for wildlife and essential ecosystem services like capturing and storing carbon, moderating water flows, reducing air pollution, and providing recreational opportunites for Americans to enjoy.

Bottom line: forests are important. Wisevoter reported U.S. forests are responsible for creating over 900 thousand jobs, as well.

The data looks at four areas.

• Forest coverage percentage
• Burned acreage percentage
• Total acres of forest
• Tree cover loss

Montana ranks #39 in forest coverage

Though, as we'll find out in a few sentences, Montana has plenty of forest acres it still doesn't make up a majority of the state. Forests cover 27.8% of Montana's land.

Maine checked in number one in forest coverage percentage at 88.8% and New Hampshire in second at 81.9%.

The states with the least forest coverage are North Dakota (1.8%), Nebraska, South Dakota and Kansas. 

Montana ranks #5 in total acres of forest

Due to its sheer size, Montana is in the top echelon in forest acreage with over 25.8 million acres. The only states with more acreage are Alaska (114.1 million acres), Texas, California and Oregon. 

Montana ranks #6 in burned acreage

Typically, we don't like to rank high in this category but Montana lost .79% of it's acreage to fires.

Montana ranks #11 in tree cover loss

Coinciding with burned acreage, Montana lost 59.2 million acres.