Comment on "The extent of forest in dryland biomes".

Bastin et al (Reports, 12 May 2017, p. 635) claim to have discovered 467 million hectares of new dryland forest. We would argue that these additional areas are not completely "new" and that some have been reported before. A second shortcoming is that not all sources of uncertainty are considered; the uncertainty could be much higher than the reported value of 3.5%.