Agricultural expansion in Brazil’s Pará and Mato Grosso states has destroyed 27 million hectares (67 million acres) of jaguar habitat — an area the size of the U.K. — with 5 million hectares (12 million acres) cleared between 2014 and 2023, most of it illegally.
A report by Global Witness links some of this deforestation to indirect suppliers of JBS, the world’s largest meatpacker, which has failed to fully uphold its pledge to eliminate illegal deforestation from its supply chain by 2025.
The report highlights weak enforcement of environmental laws and recent attempts by local governments to reverse antideforestation policies, as agribusiness continues to wield major political and economic power.
With Brazil hosting the COP30 climate summit later this year, campaigners are urging governments and corporations to fulfill deforestation pledges, improve supply chain traceability, and address agriculture’s growing role in greenhouse gas emissions.
A new analysis of more than 70,000 wild animal species reveals that climate change is now the third-greatest threat to the planet’s wildlife, following overexploitation and habitat degradation.
The study found that nearly 5% of the assessed species are threatened by climate change, with ocean invertebrates being particularly vulnerable to climate change-related threats, such as extreme temperatures, floods, droughts, storms and ocean acidification.
The study warns that some animal populations, both on land and at sea, have already begun to collapse due to climate change-related events, and it’s now necessary to monitor mass die-offs to understand the impacts of climate change and predict future impacts.
