- According to data from Global Forest Watch, the Pirahã Indigenous Territory in Brazil lost 7,000 hectares of tree cover from 2002-24.
- A large spike occurred in 2024, when the territory lost 3,200 hectares of tree cover.
- Government officials told Mongabay that the recently contacted Pirahã people are facing a malaria outbreak, and the deforestation is the result of an effort by Brazil’s Indigenous affairs agency to improve food security.
- The situation is complex, conservationists say, and although the clearings to plant crops may exacerbate the risk of malaria, the Pirahã people need food to improve their ability to fight the disease.
Tucked into Brazil’s Amazon forest, along the Maici River where recently contacted Pirahã people live, journalists observed a dramatic uptick in forest loss. According to data from Global Forest Watch, the Pirahã Indigenous Territory lost 3,200 hectares (7,900 acres) of tree cover in 2024, roughly the size of more than 6,000 soccer fields, representing the largest spike of deforestation between 2001 and 2024.
But the cause was beyond the usual culprits of deforestation in the Amazon. In fact, national authorities say, it was part of an effort to address issues vulnerable Indigenous communities face following land invasions: food insecurity and the spread of diseases.
The recent spike is mostly due to land clearings to improve food security and a health crisis in the affected population, said Daniel Cangussu, coordinator of the Madeira Ethno-Environmental Protection Front (FPE Madeira-Purus), a branch of Funai, Brazil’s Indigenous agency, which specializes in monitoring and protecting isolated and recently contacted people in the southern Amazonas region. Cangussu said via WhatsApp that Funai and the Pirahã people cleared land to plant crops such as cassava for the roughly 800 people who live there.
For several decades, the Pirahã Indigenous people have faced a multitude of issues, from illegal loggers and hunters to invasions by outsiders seeking to extract natural resources from their territory in Brazil’s Amazonas state. Wildlife that people would hunt have been scared away, and fish stocks also declined due to the destruction. In recent years, government officials discovered the population was suffering from a malaria outbreak — a common side effect of deforestation and the encroachment of outsiders who can spread the disease.
Officials began to monitor the humanitarian crisis and implemented measures to address the issue in 2023 and 2024 and are no longer clearing land near the river. The situation is complex, they say, and the Pirahã need food to improve their ability to fight the disease.
“I can assure you that these are villages and clearings for farming,” Cangussu said. “The Indigenous people were experiencing food security problems. In 2023, it became more intense and Funai, along with [the Pirahã], implemented the clearing of several clearings along the Maici River.”
Cangussu explained that there had been illegal deforestation in the past, which is now under control. During an investigation by the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office in 2023, officials reported evidence of mismanagement and possible misappropriation of funds (by unspecified sources) from the Indigenous peoples’ social benefit cards, as well as suspicions of collusion with illicit activities and third-party interests in Pirahã territory. These included illegal logging, illegal hunting and the irregular trade of resources commonly extracted by the Pirahã, such as Brazil nuts, copaiba and honey.
Ever since these problems came to light, the Pirahã people are no longer under the care of the Madeira Regional Coordination, a Funai unit that is responsible for the protection of Indigenous peoples in the Maderia River region, and are instead assisted by the FPE Madeira-Purus.
A spokesperson for Funai told Mongabay that “to expand ethno-environmental protection for these people and prevent the escalation of historical conflicts in the territory, FPE Madeira has maintained teams continuously in the Pirahã territory in recent years and, in 2025, built a new Ethno-environmental Protection Base in the Baixo Maici region, within the Indigenous Land.”
The Pirahã people are considered recently contacted, which means they maintain some contact with segments of national society while preserving significant sociocultural autonomy.
While the invasions by outsiders and possible corruption are now under control of the FPE Madeira-Purus, federal prosecutor Daniel Luís Dalberto, cabinet head of the office for Indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation and of recent contact, told Mongabay that the malaria has not yet been contained.
Deforestation and malaria
In addition to deforestation within the Pirahã Indigenous Territory, satellite imagery analyzed by Mongabay reveals extensive deforestation in the surrounding areas, particularly in the south, where the Trans-Amazonian Highway (BR-230) is located. Inside the Pirahã Indigenous Territory, 7,000 hectares (17,300 acres) of forest cover have been lost since 2002. Indigenous peoples from Jiahui, Tenharim and Parintintim communities nearby have also faced immense pressure from illegal loggers, miners and the BR-230 in recent years.
Dalberto, also coordinator of the Working Group on Traditional Communities of the Chamber of Indigenous Populations and Traditional Communities, said that after the BR-230 destroyed much of their livelihood, some individuals from affected communities turned to illegal logging and mining in the region, including inside the Pirahã Indigenous Territory.
“Back then, it took me a long time to understand the situation,” Dalberto said. “The Indigenous people from the surrounding areas, from Jiahui, Parintintim, Tenharim, they suffered a lot, right? Many on the Trans-Amazonian Highway were decimated. Due to all the circumstances — the invasion and destruction of ancestral territories, the violence and deaths from all kinds of infectious diseases brought there, the social disruption — [some individuals] ended up learning to defend themselves from our world.”
However, Dalberto said that despite the struggles they have faced, today, the people from surrounding areas remain resilient, strong and continue to fight for their territorial rights.
Renata Muylaert, a research associate at the Disease Ecology Lab at the University of Sydney, explained via email that malaria outbreaks are influenced by many factors, including landscape configuration, which can create an increased risk and allow for more exposure to mosquito bites. According to a 2018 study, each square kilometer (0.4 square miles) of forest lost in the Brazilian Amazon can produce 27 new cases of malaria.
The link between deforestation and malaria was echoed by Paula Ribeiro Prist, a biologist and senior program coordinator for the Forest and Grasslands Unit at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). She told Mongabay over a video call that areas where forests meet cleared land are where a higher abundance of vectors (or mosquito vectors) are found. Known as the forest fringe effect, the lack of trees causes significantly higher temperatures and decreases the ground’s ability to absorb water, leading to small pools of water, which are ideal breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
While there is a very strong link between deforestation and malaria, food insecurity can increase a population’s vulnerability to the disease, Prist explained. Therefore, although the clearings to plant crops inside the Pirahã Indigenous Territory may exacerbate the risk of malaria, the Pirahã people need food to improve their ability to fight the disease.
“It’s a very tricky and complicated situation,” she said.
Banner image: A Pirahã family floating on a river, 2017. Image by Caleb Everett via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Citations:
MacDonald, A. J., & Mordecai, E. A. (2019). Amazon deforestation drives malaria transmission, and malaria burden reduces forest clearing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(44), 22212-22218. doi:10.1073/pnas.1905315116
Chaves, L.S.M., Conn, J.E., López, R.V.M. et al. (2018). Abundance of impacted forest patches less than 5 km2 is a key driver of the incidence of malaria in Amazonian Brazil. Scientific Reports, 8, 7077. doi:10.1038/s41598-018-25344-5
Laporta, G.Z., Ilacqua, R.C., Bergo, E.S. et al. (2021). Malaria transmission in landscapes with varying deforestation levels and timelines in the Amazon: a longitudinal spatiotemporal study. Scientific Reports, 11, 647. doi:doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-85890-3
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