A pandemic turns out to be an opportune time for illegal loggers. A recent report by Brazilian non-governmental organizations found 464,759 hectares (1.15 million acres) were deforested in the Amazon rainforest between 2019 and 2020, an area three times the size of São Paulo. The analysis reveals that logging has reached the untouched core of the Amazon.

At the start of the COP26 climate talks this week, world leaders promised to stop deforestation by 2030. Although similar pledges have faltered in the past, this one will include almost $19 billion of public and private funds, and is backed by Brazil, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo which account for 85% of the world’s forests.

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The effort can’t come soon enough for the world’s largest rainforest. The Amazon Environmental Research Institute (Ipam) states that almost 20% of all-time recorded destruction in the Amazon happened between August 2019 and July 2020. It is estimated that 2.8 million hectares (6.9 million acres) of undesignated areas of the Amazon have been deforested. The enormity of what was destroyed during the pandemic reveals the failures of control systems to keep illegal hardwoods out of the market.

The logging monitoring system developed by Imazon called Simex, is based on satellite imagery. The system expanded operations across the Amazon in 2020, where Imazon was joined by other organizations including the Institute for Forestry and Agricultural Management and Certification (Imaflora). The group formed the Simex report that was released in September 2021.

Where the deforestation of the Amazon is happening

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The group of organizations managed to cover seven of the nine states that make up the Brazilian Amazon, that account for most of Brazil’s rainforest timber production. More than half of the logging happened in the state of Mato Grosso, followed by Amazonas and Rondônia. The area covers 10 municipalities in those states along with Roraima, Acre, and Pará.