Deforestation in the Legal Amazon decreased by 61.4% in May this year, compared to the same month in 2025. It is the largest percentage reduction in deforestation ever recorded in the region. There were 370 square kilometers of vegetation suppression last month, compared to 960 square kilometers in May 2025. Data from the Real-Time Deforestation Detection System (Deter) were released this Thursday (11), during President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's visit to the Amazon Regional Observatory (ORA) of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO), in Brasília. Related news: Climate crisis is the worst challenge in human history, says scientist. Inmet warns of favorable conditions for a new episode of El Niño. Blue carbon gains space on the ocean climate agenda. The Deter numbers, generated by the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe), guide teams in the field for actions to combat deforestation, especially from the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama) and the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio). The Minister of Environment and Climate Change, João Paulo Capobianco, explained that the reduction is a milestone. This is because, historically, deforestation increases in May, the beginning of the dry season in the Amazon. "We monitor this day by day with a certain amount of anxiety. With Ibama going into the field carrying out remote embargoes, ICMBio going into the field preventing deforestation in federal conservation units and also acting in indigenous lands and settlements, we achieved this fundamental feat", said the minister. The annual deforestation rate is extracted from the Brazilian Amazon Forest Deforestation Satellite Monitoring Project (Prodes) system, which runs from August of one year to July of the following year. The expectation, according to Capobianco, is to have the lowest final number of deforestation in the history of the Amazon in the next period, to be consolidated on July 31st of this year. In the aggregate period from August 2025 to May 2026, the drop in deforestation was 37.5%, compared to August 2024/May 2025. The deforested area in the period was 2,189 square kilometers, also the smallest in history. “This shows that deforestation control in the Amazon is working,” said Capobianco, citing actions announced yesterday by President Lula, in a ceremony for World Environment Day, celebrated on June 5th. Among Deter's deforestation alerts, 37.1% were in regularized areas. In the Legal Amazon, deforestation allowed on private properties is 20% of the area, in accordance with the rules of the Forest Code. 21.3% of alerts occurred in undesignated public forests and 17.4% in areas without land registration, that is, areas of illegal deforestation. Cerrado Archive Photo - ICMBIO/disclosure Inpe also presented alert data for the Cerrado, which point to a downward trend in deforestation in the biome. In May 2026, there was a 12.2% reduction in deforestation, compared to May last year. For the aggregate period from August 2025 to May this year, the drop in vegetation suppression was 8.2% compared to the previous period. There were 4,208 square kilometers of forest deforested. In the case of the Cerrado, 73.4% of deforestation occurred on already regularized private properties. In this biome, 65% of the areas can be deforested, that is, it is legal deforestation from an authorization point of view. US accusation The persistence of illegal deforestation in Brazil is one of the United States' allegations for the imposition of additional tariffs on Brazilian products imported into the country. Earlier this month, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) suggested a punitive 25% tax on “unreasonable” Brazilian practices that “encumber or restrict” American trade. In the USTR's assessment, even though Brazil has a legal framework to combat illegal deforestation, the country has a history of failures in its effective application. Minister João Paulo Capobianco highlighted that the data shows the opposite. “Brazil is acting objectively and obtaining results proven by research, by scientific studies, that the Amazon is in a new situation with environmental control, with really very positive results,” he said. President Lula reinforced that the United States is wrong when it questions Brazil's actions against deforestation. “They don't know the work we do to bring deforestation to zero by 2030,” said Lula about Brazilian goals in the area of ​​the environment and climate change. “This is a decision by our government, it is for the sake of justice and Brazil's participation in helping planet Earth, fulfilling our obligation to try to avoid deforestation as much as possible and proving that non-deforestation is more profitable than deforestation”, he added. The minister also classified as untrue the allegation that Brazil was exporting wood of illegal origin. "All wood exported by Brazil is monitored. There is the entire chain of custody, with a detailed bar code, everything that is extracted in forest management in the Amazon is properly monitored", he added.