On paper, the Brazilian Amazon is one of the most protected ecosystems on the planet. There are thousands of protected areas, in addition to rules that safeguard forests on private lands.
More importantly, big meatpacking companies that buy cattle — the largest driver of deforestation, by far, in the Amazon — committed more than a decade ago to only buy cattle from land without forest loss. This commitment was supposed to prevent any additional losses.
Yet year after year, satellites that monitor changes in forest cover find the same thing: The Amazon is shrinking. Between August 1, 2018, and July 31, 2021, more than 34,000 square km (8.4 million acres) disappeared from the Brazilian Amazon. That’s an area larger than the entire nation of Belgium, and a 52 percent increase compared to the previous three years.
It doesn’t add up. Assuming satellites don’t lie, someone is hiding deforestation.
In a cattle laundering scheme, ranchers move cattle from “dirty” ranches, which contribute to deforestation, to ranches that are “clean,” with no recent forest loss. By the time those cattle arrive at slaughterhouses, the path they’ve taken is obscured, as is the damage they’ve caused.
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Cattle laundering is not only driving deforestation in the Amazon forest but also within its formally protected areas — public lands set aside explicitly for the conservation of natural resources and, in many cases, Indigenous people.
