Surrounded by soy fields and cattle pastures, Xingu Indigenous Park and Capoto/Jarina Indigenous Territory — still shrouded in rainforest — stand out like a green thumb in Brazil’s Mato Grosso state. Home to roughly 7,500 Indigenous residents in 18 groups, the two territories cover 3.3 million hectares — an area bigger than Belgium — and are a haven for wildlife. Yet despite decades of protection, the reserves are not immune to the pressures building at their boundaries. Google Timelapse shows how Xingu and Capoto/Jarina became an island of forest in a sea of industrial agriculture. Xingu Indigenous Park lost 15% of its primary forest cover between 2002 and 2023, an area of 368,000 hectares, according to satellite data from Global Forest Watch (GFW). More than a quarter of that was lost in 2016 alone, when fires ripped through the reserve. The adjacent Capoto/Jarina Indigenous Territory lost 8.3% of primary forest cover between 2002 and 2023, an area of 46,300 hectares. The worst years for forest loss were 2017, 2020 and 2022. Both territories saw big drops in deforestation activity in 2023. But that appears to be but a blip, with imagery and data showing huge swaths of land lost to fire in 2024. Satellite data show large swaths of tree cover were lost in both Xingu Indigenous Park and Capoto/Jarina Indigenous Territory in 2024. Data from NASA and satellite imagery from Planet Labs and Sentinel 2A indicate fires were the driving force behind forest loss in both Indigenous territories. In Capoto/Jarina…This article was originally published on Mongabay
Início » Fires rip through Indigenous territories in Brazilian Amazon
