Abstract

Brazil’s Amazon rainforest—one of the planet’s most critical reservoirs of biodiversity and carbon—faces escalating threats driven by political and economic pressures to dismantle environmental protections. A recent study by Rodrigues et al. (2025) highlights the concerning rollback of protected areas (PAs) in Brazil, with a particular focus on the proposed abolition of Cristalino II State Park in Mato Grosso, a region recognized for its extraordinary ecological richness in the southern Amazon.