In Brazil, 51 mi hectares of preservation areas are illegally occupied

Brazil has more than 51 million hectares of preservation areas with overlapping rural properties. These are indigenous, quilombola, and conservation territories, public forests, and areas destined for settlements that are illegally occupied by cattle ranches, for example.

The figures were released Wednesday (Feb. 21) by the Forest Code Observatory, which brings together over 40 environmental monitoring and preservation organizations. The observatory used the new version of the Forest Code Thermometer to perform the calculations and obtain the data, a tool developed by the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) in partnership with other institutions.

In undesignated public forests alone, the perimeter where rural properties overlap has exceeded 15 million hectares. The state with the highest concentration of this kind is Amazonas, in the North, with more than 13 million hectares.

Overlapping areas involving traditional territories account for 12 percent of the total (4.8 mi hectares). Quilombola communities cover 993 thousand hectares, or 2.5 percent.