The Brazilian Amazon lost 693,000 hectares to deforestation in 2025, the lowest figure since MapBiomas, a network of universities, NGOs and tech companies that maps land cover from satellite images, began its historical series in 1985. The number comes from the network's annual report, released on Wednesday (14) and reported by G1. Of the total cleared last year, 639,000 hectares (92%) was native vegetation, while 54,000 hectares was secondary vegetation already altered by human activity.
According to Bruno Ferreira, a researcher at the Imazon institute who works with MapBiomas, 2025 saw the smallest destruction of native vegetation in the entire series, counting forests, grasslands, savannas and secondary growth. The result tracks the downward trend recorded by Prodes, the official satellite monitoring program run by Brazil's space agency, Inpe. "The reduction seen in recent years happens in a context of resuming and strengthening prevention and control policies, with enforcement operations, satellite monitoring and land-use planning," Ferreira told G1. He cautions, however, that the overlap does not allow crediting any single measure.
Roads, pasture and mining keep pressing the biome
The record low does not erase the accumulated damage. Between 1985 and 2025, the Amazon lost 54.7 million hectares of native vegetation, and the area converted to human use grew 492%, reaching 74.6 million hectares. Farming and ranching now occupy 65.3 million hectares, 15.5% of the biome. Pasture alone covers 50.8 million hectares after growing 556% in four decades, and it was the first recorded use in 77% of deforested areas. Mining jumped from 32,000 hectares in 1985 to 440,000 in 2025, with nearly half of that area opened in the last ten years.
The study crossed MapBiomas maps with road databases from the national transport infrastructure department (DNIT) and OpenStreetMap, including side roads outside the official network. Within five kilometers of roads, farming and ranching occupy 40.2% of the land, equivalent to 63 million hectares; within 20 kilometers, the share drops to 26.7%. According to Ferreira, new roads open access to once isolated areas and can link deforestation frontiers, illegal logging and irregular occupation.
Protected areas, which include Indigenous lands, conservation units and quilombola territories (communities founded by descendants of people who escaped slavery), still hold 98% native vegetation cover. Around those territories, however, farming and ranching grew 561% since 1985 and already occupy 31% of the surrounding belt. "Protected areas play a fundamental role in conserving the biome, working as a kind of barrier against the transformation of the landscape," said Ives Brandão, of the MapBiomas Amazon team.
Amazon deforestation is Brazil's main source of greenhouse gas emissions, which makes the biome's figures sensitive for foreign markets that import beef and soy and demand supply chain traceability. MapBiomas produces its mapping from Landsat satellite images at 30-meter resolution, processed on Google Earth Engine. Researchers interviewed say that holding the downward trend depends on continuing enforcement, satellite monitoring and protection of the territories that still concentrate standing forest.