Amazon rainforest monitoring

This micro-site aggregates data on deforestation in the Amazon from several sources. The most timely data comes from Brazil: specifically Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and Imazon, a Brazilian NGO.

Narrative context on these issues can be found at Mongabay’s Amazon rainforest section as well as Mongabay’s regular news reporting on the Amazon in English, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish. Recent headlines from these sites can be found at the bottom of this page.

Sections

This site is organized into sections:

Annual data

Annual deforestation in the legal Amazon since 1988, according to INPE's PRODES system. Note: 2023 data is preliminary.
Annual deforestation in the legal Amazon since 1988, according to INPE’s PRODES system. Note: 2023 data is preliminary.

Recent news on monitoring deforestation in the Amazon rainforest

English

  • New refuge helps protect Amazon’s most endangered monkey, but gaps remain
    on April 18, 2025 at 2:19 pm

    Brazil designated a refuge twice the size of Manhattan near the Amazonian city of Manaus in June 2024 to protect the pied tamarin, South America’s most endangered monkey. But almost one year later, the 15,000-hectare (37,000-acre) reserve is still being implemented institutionally, and conservationists say it falls short of what the species needs to survive.

  • Illegal gold mining creeps within a kilometer of Amazon’s second-tallest tree
    on April 14, 2025 at 5:11 pm

    - Prosecutors in Brazil’s Amapá state have warned of an illegal gold mine operating just 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) from second-highest known tree in the Brazilian Amazon — an 85-meter (279-foot) red angelim.- Illegal gold miners have been moving into Amapá in the wake of federal raids on mining hotspots in other parts of the Brazilian Amazon, including the Yanomami and Munduruku Indigenous territories.- A surge in the gold price has fueled the miners’ destructive potential and their capacity to open new areas in highly isolated places.

  • Mongabay investigation spurs Brazil crackdown on illegal cattle in Amazon’s Arariboia territory
    on April 11, 2025 at 2:23 pm

    - An ongoing Brazilian government operation launched in February has removed between 1,000 and 2,000 illegal head of cattle from the Arariboia Indigenous Territory in the Amazon Rainforest.- In June 2024, Mongabay published the results of a yearlong investigation, revealing that large portions of the Arariboia territory have been taken over for commercial cattle ranching, in violation of the Constitution; the project received funding and editorial support from the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network.- “Your report is very similar to what we’re actually finding in the field. It showed an accurate reality and this helped us a lot in practical terms,” Marcos Kaingang, national secretary for Indigenous territorial rights at the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, told Mongabay in a video interview.- The investigation also revealed details that authorities said they hadn’t been aware of, including the illegal shifting of the territory’s border markers, Kaingang said: “We brought it up as an important point in our discussions and we verified that the [markers] had in fact been changed.”

  • Indigenous aguaje tree climbers bring down profits in Peru’s Amazon — sustainably
    on April 10, 2025 at 7:22 pm

    - The aguaje, a tropical palm tree that grows in peatlands and other wetland areas in tropical South America, produces oval-shaped fruits that can be consumed raw or processed to make beverages, soap, oils and other products.- The discovery of its market potential in the 1990s led to destructive harvesting and genetic degradation as people filed to palm swamps in the Peruvian Amazon to collect the fruits.- Sustainable harvesting techniques, such as climbing the aguaje tree to collect the fruit instead of cutting it down, have taken hold in local communities that previously cut down the trees.- Transportation, the lack of phone and internet connections, the impact of climate change on ecological processes and the lack of a secure market to sell aguaje fruits remain a challenge for communities.

  • For scandal-ridden carbon credit industry, Amazon restoration offers redemption
    on April 9, 2025 at 7:00 am

    - As REDD projects around the world face setbacks, restoration projects in the Amazon are flourishing as a means of reviving market confidence in forest-based carbon credits.- In Brazil, the golden goose for restoration, this business model has attracted companies from the mining and beef industries, banks, startups, and big tech.- Federal and state governments are granting public lands to restoration companies to recover degraded areas.- Restoration projects require substantial investments and long-term commitment, face challenges such as increasingly severe fire seasons, and deal with uncertainty over the future of the carbon market.

Spanish

Amazonia

Brazilian Portuguese

Amazonia