As the 2026 El Niño intensifies across the Amazon, new research highlights the urgent need to better protect the region’s remaining forests from disturbances.
As the 2026 El Niño intensifies across the Amazon, new research highlights the urgent need to better protect the region’s remaining forests from disturbances.
While measures to avoid deforestation or restore cleared land dominate many conservation strategies, approaches to protect existing forests from disturbances, including selective logging and wildfires, can often provide the biggest “bang for your buck”, a new study, published today in Science shows.
The findings are from an international team of researchers from the UK, Brazil, Sweden and Australia, led by scientists at Lancaster University. The group undertook the first systematic comparison study of its kind by contrasting different ways to either protect existing forests or restore them on agricultural land.
The analysis covered more than three million hectares in the regions of Santarém and Paragominas, in the Brazilian state of Pará, between 2010 and 2020. It combined high-resolution satellite imagery with field data from 381 survey transects across 38 catchments and 499 rural properties, as well as models mapping 160 bird species and 426 tree species.
Read More: Lancaster University
Image: Pygmy Antwren (Myrmotherula brachyura) recorded in the Santarém region where it occurs in the midstory and subcanopy of primary tropical rainforest. This species was used to model biodiversity value (Credit: Alexander Lees/Manchester Metropolitan University)
