Brazil Records 65 Percent Drop In Amazon Area Burned By Fire, Lowest Since Monitoring Began

Brazil Records 65 Percent Drop In Amazon Area Burned By Fire, Lowest Since Monitoring Began

Last year, a historic drought in the lowlands of the Amazon Basin saw hundreds of thousands of acres go up in flames.

This year, the combination of more careful local communities and healthy rains have meant that the amount of tropical rainforest burned by wildfires this year has been 65% less than in 2024.

The data comes from a satellite monitoring program called MapBiomas, which began tracking fire in the Amazon following the “lungs of the world are burning” headlines made during the fire season of 2019.

This year’s drop of 65% also happens to be the lowest amount recorded since MapBiomas began monitoring the basin.

Felipe Martenexen, a researcher at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, attributed the improvements to a “more intense and sustained rainy season” this year, as well as “farmers and residents [being] more careful.”

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The data also shows that across Brazil, both in the Amazon basin and beyond it, 54% fewer acres of landscape have been burned by fires.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio da Silva is set to welcome the world to the COP30 UN climate conference in the Amazon city of Belem in three months’ time, several years into his pledge of ending Amazon deforestation by 2030.