Amazon loses 240 million acres of forest, risking rainfall disruption

Imagine Texas and California pushed together into one patch of land. Now picture all of it cut down, burned or otherwise gone. That is roughly the amount of original primary forest the Amazon has lost, according to a new report from Amazon Conservation’s Monitoring of the Andes Amazon Program (MAAP). The latest analysis found that 97 million hectares (240 million acres) of primary forest had been lost across the Amazon biome’s nine countries by the end of 2025. It also found that the routes carrying moisture during the dry and transition seasons had been the most disrupted. Most of that loss came from people clearing land, with fire accounting for a large share. About 15% of the basin’s original forest is now gone.The numbers come from MAAP #250, a 2026 update to the group’s earlier tracking. In 2021, the same group put the figure at 13.2%. The jump may look small on paper, but it covers a huge amount of ground.The Amazon’s vanishing forestAmazon primary forest loss. Data: Amazon Conservation/MAAP, UMD.Between 2022 and 2025 alone, another 13.04 million hectares (32.2 million acres) disappeared, the analysis found. That is nearly 15 times the size of Yellowstone National Park! Accor...