In the Amazon, Herons, or Egrets, are usually found together, and most commonly, where small fish are in abundance, Careiro, Amazonas, Brazil. Photo Credit: Ramesh Thadani/Getty Images
Environment BrazilNumbers Don’t Lie: Conservation Effectively Curbs Amazon Deforestation
The destruction of the Amazon rainforest has drastically slowed in 2023, a shift that coincides with the rise to power of pro-conservation governments in Brazil and Colombia, thus contributing to curbing global warming with trees absorbing large quantities of carbon dioxide.
“These data show there still is hope for the Amazon,” says Matt Finer, an ecologist and director at the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP).
According to the analysis of the nonprofit Amazon Conservation’s MAAP forest monitoring program 2023, deforestation slowed down in all nine Amazon countries, with declining forest loss in Brazil, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. The forest loss fell to 9,117 km2 or 55.8% from January 1 to November 8, an area equivalent to the size of Puerto Rico. As the world’s largest rainforest, the Amazon contains more than 37 billion metric tons of carbon, the equivalent of 2.5 times the greenhouse gas emissions from all sources globally in 2022. In 2021, over 100 countries pledged to stop deforestation by the decade’s end.
