Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon biome fell by 23.5% in 2025 compared with 2024, according to a new report from MapBiomas, a Brazil-based land-use mapping project. Reductions in deforestation were recorded across the board in all of Brazil’s biomes, culminating in a 21% nationwide decrease in forest loss. In total, nearly 985,000 hectares (2.4 million acres) of forested land was cut down in 2025, the report found. Of this, 289,478 hectares (715,315 acres) was deforested in the Amazon. The decline in deforestation likely reflects a combination of stronger environmental enforcement, improved satellite monitoring and growing market demands for sustainable production, Nathalia Crusco, a researcher with MapBiomas, wrote to Mongabay. Only 5% of deforested land overlapped with enforcement actions or clearing authorizations in 2019, compared with 65% over the 2019-2025 period, she added, based on MapBiomas data. Deforestation also fell by nearly 17% in the Cerrado savanna, where agriculture expansion is most aggressive. More than half of the Cerrado’s native vegetation has already been cleared. And while the rate of deforestation in the Cerrado declined, the majority of forest clearing in Brazil, 55%, took place in the Cerrado savanna, the report said. Much of the reduction in deforestation was within Indigenous territories. Clear-cut deforestation on Indigenous lands in the Brazilian Amazon fell by 25% in 2025, according to a technical memo shared with Mongabay by Brazil’s Indigenous agency, Funai. Funai’s Remote Monitoring Center compiled the recent report. A total of 30,128 hectares (74,450 acres) of clear-cutting on Indigenous land was recorded last…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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