Brazil reported on October 16 that Amazon deforestation fell 41.8% in the year ending July 2026. Space research institute INPE measured 3,335 square kilometres cleared, down from 5,731 a year earlier and the lowest annual total since its records began in 1988.
INPE said the previous low was 4,571 square kilometres in 2012. The new figures cover August 2025 through July 2026, rather than the calendar year. Pará recorded the largest cleared area, followed by Mato Grosso and Amazonas.
The neighbouring Cerrado also reached a record low, INPE reported. Native vegetation loss there fell 23.8% to 5,516.69 square kilometres, from 7,235.27. That monitoring series began in 2001. Mongabay independently reported the declines in both biomes.
Conservation agency ICMBio linked the improvement to protected areas and enforcement. It said it issued 11,900 environmental violation notices and 2.4 billion reais in fines in federal conservation areas between 2023 and 2026. Those figures describe enforcement actions, not money necessarily collected.
Brazil also announced further investment in monitoring. Development bank BNDES said the Amazon Fund would provide 147.6 million reais for INPE's SIM-Biomas project, using artificial intelligence to better identify clearing, degradation and vegetation recovery. The project aims to flag short-term environmental risks.
According to BNDES, the next steps include extending Deter alerts to the Caatinga, Atlantic Forest and Pampa, and improving burned-area mapping from one-kilometre to 30-metre resolution across Brazil's biomes. The record decline still leaves thousands of square kilometres of vegetation lost; the new programme seeks faster, more detailed information to support protection.
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