- Despite a federal protection law, Brazil’s Atlantic Forest lost a Washington, D.C.-sized area of mature forest every year between 2010 and 2020, with most of the deforestation occurring illegally on private lands for agriculture.
- The Atlantic Forest is a critical biodiversity hotspot that supports 70% of Brazil’s GDP while serving nearly three-quarters of the country’s population.
- Major agribusiness companies, including COFCO, Bunge and Cargill, have been identified as exposed to deforestation in their soybean supply chains, with agriculture and livestock farming driving most forest loss.
- Conservation success stories like the black lion tamarin’s recovery from near-extinction demonstrate that restoration is possible, with one project planting millions of seedlings and generating significant local employment.
By 1970, scientists had spent 65 years thinking the black lion tamarin, a small monkey with a spectacular mane, was extinct. That year, locals found a small population of the species (Leontopithecus chrysopygus) clinging to survival in a patch of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. After decades of efforts, around 1,800 of these football-sized primates now swing through restored forest corridors, a rare success story in one of the world’s most threatened ecosystems.
But despite conservation wins like this, recent research reveals a sobering reality: Brazil’s Atlantic Forest continues to lose thousands of hectares of mature forest each year, even though it’s supposed to be protected under federal law. The law allows deforestation only in exceptional circumstances, which means that most of this deforestation is illegal.
“It’s really alarming to find that we are still losing large amounts of area of mature forests,” Luis Fernando Guedes Pinto, executive director of the SOS Mata Atlântica Foundation, a Brazil-based NGO, told Mongabay. It’s especially concerning, he said, “considering that the Atlantic Forest is a biodiversity hotspot, the most devastated tropical forest in Brazil, one of the most devastated tropical forests in the world, and it’s protected by a specific law.”
New research published in the journal Nature Sustainability analyzed more than 10,000 deforestation events across Brazil’s Atlantic Forest between 2010 and 2020. They found that the pace of deforestation remained steady at an average annual rate of 18,629 hectares (46,033 acres) — an area roughly the size of the U.S. capital, Washington, D.C., being lost every year — and occurred mostly on private lands, in small patches, and primarily for agricultural purposes.
The Atlantic Forest biome, known in Portuguese as Mata Atlântica, originally covered vast swaths of Brazil’s coast, and stretching south into Paraguay and Argentina. Now, according to the study, only an estimated 24% of its original forest cover remains.
A biodiversity treasure under pressure
“People know the Amazon, but they haven’t heard of the Atlantic coast forest, but it’s an extraordinarily rich environment in terms of the species that live there and only there,” Stuart Pimm, a leading conservation biologist at Duke University in the U.S. who reviewed the study but wasn’t involved in the research, told Mongabay. “The Atlantic Forest is a biodiversity hotspot. It has extremely high endemism in trees and mammals and birds and amphibians.”
The Atlantic Forest is home to an estimated 5% of all vertebrate species (species with a backbone) on Earth, including more than 1,000 bird species, 450 amphibians species, 300 reptile species, and 20,000 vascular plant species (about 8,000 of which are endemic — found nowhere else on Earth). The forest also hosts around 300 mammal species, including woolly spider monkeys (Brachyteles spp.) and maned three-toed sloth (Bradypus torquatus).
![The southern tiger cat, Leopardus guttulus, also known as the Atlantic Forest tiger cat, was only declared a separate species in 2013. This species faces a host of threats, including loss and degradation of its Atlantic Forest habitat, road-killing, and also hybridization with Geoffroy’s cat (Leopardus geoffroyi). “This species is highly dependent on fragments of native forest with good levels of conservation,” says Paula Cruz, an assistant researcher at Brazil’s National Council for Scientific and Technical Research. “These fragments are often outside protected areas, which poses a risk to the long-term conservation [of the species].” Image courtesy of the Tiger Cat Conservation Initiative. Article title - A tiger cat gains new species designation, but conservation challenges remain](https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024/04/01221347/Image-7-Leopardus-guttulus-TCCI.jpg)
Nearly three-quarters of all people in Brazil live in this biome, mostly in areas where the forest has been destroyed. The region also supports an estimated 70% of the national GDP due to its concentration of cities, industry and agriculture. The forest provides critical services, including climate and water regulation, erosion control, pollination, and pest control.
“Every year our dengue epidemics, Zika, chikungunya, yellow fever … they are also consequence of our losing our forest, including the Atlantic Forest,” said Guedes Pinto, lead author of the new study.
Destruction concentrated in agricultural hotspots
The study revealed that deforestation isn’t randomly distributed, but rather concentrated in specific regions. Researchers identified two main deforestation hotspots where most of the destruction is occurring: one in the eastern states of Bahia and Minas Gerais, and another in the southern states of Paraná and Santa Catarina.
Most of the deforestation is in the east, where the Atlantic Forest transitions to the Cerrado and Caatinga biomes. Here, Guedes Pinto said, because they’re close to these other biomes, landowners claim that the vegetation isn’t Atlantic Forest and, therefore, isn’t protected by the law.
In this hotspot, mostly seasonal deciduous forests have been cut. About 36% of the total area deforested here has been replaced by pasture, 33% by silviculture and 28% secondary vegetation.
“This new hotspot is basically large farms now,” Guedes Pinto said, as opposed to the southern hotspot (responsible for about 16% of deforestation) where forest has been replaced by mostly small farms.
“The southern hotspot in the states of Santa Catarina and Paraná are very old agriculture areas,” Guedes Pinto said. Deforestation occurs mostly in small to medium-sized farms where “small areas are cut and replaced mainly by crops, soy and corn. There, they are cutting down the edges of the remaining forests.”
Agriculture drives forest loss
According to monitoring data from SOS Mata Atlântica, the clearing of forests for agriculture and livestock farming continued to be the main cause of deforestation in Brazil last year. Most of this activity is on private lands and linked to corn, cattle, soy and eucalyptus plantations.
Recent data by the Trase transparency platform indicate that soybean production continues to consume the Atlantic Forest. More than 50,000 hectares (about 124,000 acres) of the 2022 soy harvest were cultivated in areas of the biome that had been deforested in the previous five years, between 2017 and 2021.
The research also revealed connections to major agribusiness companies. Trase identified five large agribusiness companies as the most exposed to deforestation in their soybean supply chains in the region: COFCO (6,051 hectares, or 14,952 acres), Bunge (5,625 hectares, or 13,900 acres), Cargill (3,518 hectares, or 8,693 acres), Engelhart (2,262 hectares, or 5,590 acres) and Louis Dreyfus (1,334 hectares, or 3,296 acres).
“Trase tells us that there is soy coming from deforestation from the Atlantic Forest [that] mostly is consumed in Brazil, but it’s also exported, and it’s concentrated in three or four traders,” Guedes Pinto said. “Cargill is number one with risk exposure to buying soy from deforestation from the Atlantic Forest.
“This is very surprising, to know that there are traders sourcing soy from the Atlantic Forest, which is fully protected, it’s a big exception,” he added. “It should never happen.”
Legal protection meets enforcement challenges
Deforestation continues despite strong legal protections. The Atlantic Forest Law, published in 2006, establishes rules for the conservation and use of the forest, allowing deforestation only in exceptional circumstances linked to “social interest or public utility,” including services like roads, railways, schools or hospitals.
“Improving pastures, increasing pastures, increasing crops, is not a case of social interest or public utility,” Guedes Pinto said. “Based on the literature that we have and interpreting the law, there is evidence that almost 100% of this deforestation is illegal.”
The study found that 73% of deforestation occurred on private properties, while protected areas and Indigenous lands showed much lower rates of forest loss. Enforcement remains a major challenge.
“There is a lack of enforcement of the Atlantic Forest law, especially in the [eastern] hotspot,” Guedes Pinto said.
Federal and state authorities are in charge of enforcing the Atlantic Forest protection law. From the federal side, it’s mostly IBAMA, the Brazilian environmental agency, but the responsibility also lies with state environmental authorities.
“The surprising thing about this paper is that a formally well-protected forest is still losing forest in some places,” Pimm said. “The question is, ‘Why are we losing the forest in the place that you thought to be protected?’”
IBAMA has not responded to Mongabay’s request for comment.
Conservation success stories
Despite the ongoing losses, there are examples of successful conservation within the Atlantic Forest that provide models for broader protection efforts.
The story of the black lion tamarin exemplifies what’s possible with dedicated conservation efforts. To counter the habitat loss that threatened the species, over the last three decades, the Institute for Ecological Research (IPÊ), a Brazilian NGO, has planted more than 2.7 million seedlings covering 6,000 hectares (nearly 15,000 acres) to create forest corridors connecting the various monkey populations.
The species’ recovery is proof that the method is working. In 2008, the black lion tamarin saw its conservation status improve from critically endangered to endangered, with an estimated population of around 1,800 individuals living in the wild today, from fewer than 200 previously.
“We have a very good relationship with landowners, with local communities, within municipalities,” Laury Cullen Jr., IPÊ’s project coordinator, told Mongabay. “Trust and pride are key words that hold the relationships.”
The project demonstrates the economic potential of forest restoration. “The restoration process is a strong tool in generating income,” Cullen Jr. said. “For every 1,000 hectares restored, we generate 100 direct jobs. For every $1 million invested in planting native forests, we generate 30 direct jobs. This is five times more than the oil and gas industry.”
All of these tree-planting projects have created a demand for tree seedlings and a thriving industry of local plant nurseries. Women have been largely responsible for managing tree nurseries, while others learned to identify trees and collect and maintain tree stocks.
“I produce native seedlings,” said Maria Regina dos Santos, a seedling nursery leader. “Today I live exclusively from the nursery … You can live well if you work well.”
An example for the world
According to new analysis released by SOS Mata Atlântica, vegetation loss in mature forest areas has fallen only slightly since 2020, from 14,697 hectares in 2023 to 14,366 hectares in 2024 (36,371 to 35,499 acres) — a reduction of just 2%.
Experts warn that the drop in deforestation in 2024 is insufficient.
“It’s in a trajectory of decreasing, but the decrease is much lower than we expected,” Guedes Pinto said. To curb illegal deforestation, “we need to make sure that the forests that remain inside private properties and are protected by law are not cut down.”
“The Atlantic Forest has the potential to be the first tropical forest of the world where we reach zero deforestation, where we have large-scale restoration,” Guedes Pinto said. “It can be an example for the world to tackle both the global climate and biodiversity crises.”
The Atlantic Forest’s restoration efforts have gained international recognition. In December 2022, the United Nations named the Atlantic Forest restoration work as one of 10 World Restoration Flagships during the 15th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15) in Montreal, Canada. The recognition went to a coalition of more than 300 organizations working to restore 15 million hectares (37 million acres) of Atlantic Forest by 2050 across Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay.
“It’s possible we can do it in Brazil,” Guedes Pinto said. “We can do in the Atlantic Forest, then we can do in other biomes of Brazil and other forests of the world.”
Banner image Seven colored tanager (Tangara fastuosa) in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. Photo by Hector Bottai (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Liz Kimbrough is a staff writer for Mongabay and holds a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Tulane University, where she studied the microbiomes of trees. View more of her reporting here.
How settlers, scientists, and a women-led industry saved Brazil’s rarest primate
Citations:
Amaral, S., Metzger, J. P., Rosa, M., Adorno, B. V., Gonçalves, G. C., & Guedes Pinto, L. F. (2025). Alarming patterns of mature forest loss in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Nature Sustainability, 8(3), 256-264. doi:10.1038/s41893-025-01508-w
Laurance, W. F. (2009). Conserving the hottest of the hotspots. Biological Conservation, 142(6), 1137. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2008.10.011
Rezende, C. L., Scarano, F. R., Assad, E. D., Joly, C. A., Metzger, J. P., Strassburg, B. B. N., … Mittermeier, R. A. (2018). From hotspot to hopespot: An opportunity for the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Perspectives in Ecology and Conservation, 16(4), 208-214. doi:10.1016/j.pecon.2018.10.002
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