Has the Amazon rainforest been saved, or should I still worry?

Deforestation rates fell in 2012 but they are on the increase again. Stay engaged

Peak deforestation angst didn't actually coincide with peak deforestation. While the wearing of "Save the Rainforest" T-shirts was de rigueur in the late 80s, the worst destruction came in 2004, a year when we (as in humankind) chopped down 27,000km2 of Amazon rainforest. By that point there wasn't much left to play with: the Brazilian Amazon region (the largest continuous tropical rainforest in the world) had shrunk from four million kilometres (close to half the size of continental Europe) to just 18% of that size.

Brazil is still home to 40% of global rainforest, despite so much of it being destroyed to supply a range of products from toothpaste and face creams (tallow from cattle) to leather for football boots. It was in the 80s that agronomists first recognised that agricultural markets were behind runaway deforestation. In 2009, the Greenpeace report Slaughter of the Amazon showed the international leather and beef trades as the primary drivers of deforestation in the region.