Brazil’s Atlantic Forest lost 8,658 hectares in 2025. That number is simultaneously a milestone and a warning.

According to data released Thursday by the NGO SOS Mata Atlântica, it is the first time deforestation in the biome has fallen below 10,000 hectares since monitoring began in 1985. The figure represents a 40% drop from 2024, when 14,366 hectares were cleared. Under former president Jair Bolsonaro, annual losses exceeded 20,000 hectares in each of his final two years in office.

Luís Fernando Guedes Pinto, executive director of SOS Mata Atlântica, said the biome could reach “zero deforestation” within three years if the downward trend holds. The trend, according to the NGO, reflects a combination of public pressure, civil society mobilisation, environmental policies, and enforcement actions.

But the trend is colliding with two political forces that could reverse it.

Brazil’s congress has approved what environmentalists call the “devastation bill” — legislation that removes the requirement for prior approval from the federal environmental agency before states authorise deforestation. Lula vetoed parts of the law; congress overrode those vetoes at the end of 2025. The law’s constitutionality is now before the supreme court. Malu Ribeiro, director of public policy at SOS Mata Atlântica, called it a “distortion” that puts Brazil at odds with the Paris agreement.

Then there is the October presidential election. Flávio Bolsonaro, the senator and son of the former president, is tied in polls with Lula. He has vowed to follow his father’s playbook — an administration under which deforestation surged across Brazilian biomes and illegal mining encroached on Indigenous lands. Pinto described the scenario as “very worrying,” warning that Bolsonaro’s political group “is anti-science, denies climate science, and sees nature and forests as obstacles to development.”

The Atlantic Forest, home to 80% of Brazil’s population and cities including São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, retains just 24% of its original cover. As Pinto noted: every fragment lost makes a huge difference.

Sources