In partnership with Brazilian allies, Amazon Watch organized a flight over the Amazon rainforest with experts and key journalists to expose fires, deforestation, illegal mining, and cattle ranching.

We flew over Rondônia and southern Amazonas, a region considered the "new Amazon deforestation frontier." Unfortunately, as expected, we documented massive destruction surrounded by immense areas of intact rainforest.

The images showed large areas of deforested rainforest that had already been consumed by fire and deep scars from mining activities within protected areas, along with illegal landing strips, large plots of land being prepared for planting, and cattle grazing alongside recent fires.

We saw all the stages of the deforestation process one after another. The extraction of high-value timber, followed by the burning of vegetation to grow pasture, and then cattle herds occupying areas that until recently had been covered by intact forest.