Amazon loses a tenth of its vegetation in four decades – report

Brazil, which holds about two-thirds of the Amazon, also leads the destruction.

Cattle graze on land recently burned and deforested by cattle farmers near Novo Progresso, Para state, Brazil (Andre Penner/AP/PA)

The Amazon region has lost 10% of its native vegetation, mostly tropical rainforest, in almost four decades, a new report says.

From 1985 to 2021, the deforested area surged from 490,000 square kilometres (190,000 square miles) to 1,250,000 square kilometres (482,000 square miles), unprecedented destruction in the Amazon, according to the Amazon Network of Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information, or Raisg.