"Passing the Herd Through": How Political and Economic Forces Are Undermining Brazil's Amazon Conservation Efforts

Brazil’s Amazon rainforest—one of the planet’s most critical reservoirs of biodiversity and carbon—faces escalating threats driven by political and economic pressures to dismantle environmental protections. A recent study by Rodrigues et al. (2025) highlights the concerning rollback of protected areas (PAs) in Brazil, with a particular focus on the proposed abolition of Cristalino II State Park in Mato Grosso, a region recognized for its extraordinary ecological richness in the southern Amazon.