The Amazon rainforest, near Manaus, Brazil. Neil Palmer / CIAT
Last year, the acreage burned in the Brazilian Amazon reached its lowest level in at least four decades.
A new analysis from the monitoring group MapBiomas finds that 7.7 million acres burned last year, down from a record high of 39 million acres the previous year. The sharp drop in acres burned came as a warming El Niño gave way to a cooling La Niña.
In 2024, El Niño helped fuel the worst drought to hit the Amazon in decades. Fires proliferated on farmland that had recently been cleared and quickly spread to surrounding rainforest. Even as Brazil cracked down on the deliberate destruction of forest, deepening drought gave rise to thousands of fires across the region. In 2025, La Niña brought more rainfall to the Brazilian Amazon, which saw the fewest number of fires in 41 years of record keeping.
Analysts at MapBiomas say that, while the recent drop in acres burned is good news for the Amazon, it would be premature to see the latest figures as a sign of things to come. A powerful El Niño is now taking shape, portending drought in the coming year.
Still, Brazil can take steps, like planting native vegetation, to limit the spread of fires on degraded lands. Since 1985, 64 percent of all land that has burned in Brazil has burned more than once, and most burned areas burn again within four years.
