- A new study shows that restored private lands in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest achieved up to 20% more forest cover than unrestored neighboring private lands.
- With 75% of the Atlantic Forest in private hands and a 6.2-million-hectare (15.3-million-acre) deficit of native vegetation, according to the law, private landowners are key to recovery.
- Over the past decade, forest gains and losses in the Atlantic Forest have essentially stagnated; but last year, half of all deforestation hit mature forests over 40 years old, threatening biodiversity and carbon stocks.
Restoration in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest is finding success on private lands, according to a newly published study. Researchers evaluated the Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact, a collaborative initiative launched in 2009 to accelerate reforestation, and found a 20% increase in vegetation cover on studied private lands from 2000-2018 compared to areas without intervention.
The pact works across 17 Brazilian states and brings together governments, NGOs, companies and landowners to identify priority areas for restoration, support implementation, and monitor environmental, social and economic outcomes. The end goal is to restore 15 million hectares (37 million acres) of forest by 2050.
“Landowners report that after starting restoration planting, springs returned, streams filled, and the land cooled,” says biologist Ludmila Pugliese de Siqueira, co-author of the new study and director of the landscape and forest restoration program at Conservation International Brazil. “For them, the result is very tangible — something that directly affects their daily lives.”
The study examined 158,000 hectares (about 390,000 acres) of land, half of it restored and the rest unrestored. In all, they found a net increase in vegetation cover of 4,600 hectares (about 11,400 acres) in the form of restored forest, an area roughly 80% the size of Manhattan or 13.5 times the size of Central Park.
Still, restoring forest on privately owned land in the Atlantic Forest remains a major challenge. About 75% of the biome is private property, and nearly 90% of its original vegetation, around 110 million hectares (272 million acres), has been lost to agriculture, pasture, logging, mining and urban expansion. It’s estimated that one-third of South America’s population lives within the forest’s original boundaries.
The Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact prioritizes the protection of legal reserves, the portion of private property that landowners are required to preserve, and permanent preservation areas, zones within private and public lands that safeguard water sources and fragile ecosystems, and which landowners are also obliged to maintain under Brazil’s Forest Code. The pact also focuses on areas surrounding conservation units, protected areas that are home to endemic or threatened wildlife species and less suitable for agriculture.
“This study becomes especially relevant in the context of COP30 [the 2025 U.N. climate summit], when we need to reinforce restoration as one of the most important nature-based solutions — one of the key tools for confronting the climate and biodiversity crisis,” says Siqueira, who served as the pact’s national coordinator until 2023.
COP30 was held last month in Belém, in the Brazilian Amazon, bringing together decision-makers from nearly every nation, alongside scientists, Indigenous peoples and civil society, to negotiate actions against the climate crisis. A large part of the discussions focused on the role of forests.
Losses and gains
Vast areas of soybean and sugarcane plantations are a common sight in the Atlantic Forest; the biome concentrates hosts a third of all the agricultural production in Brazil. According to MapBiomas, a collaborative initiative that uses satellite data to track land-use changes across Brazil, agriculture nearly doubled in the ecosystem between 1985 and 2024.
Despite ongoing reforestation efforts, MapBiomas data show that, over the past 10 years, forest gains and losses have remained essentially stagnant across the Atlantic Forest. In fact, half of all deforestation recorded in 2024 occurred in mature forests more than 40 years old, threatening biodiversity and carbon stocks.
“[Many people] see the forest as a loss of productive land,” Siqueira says. “So it’s important to highlight that it can generate returns — whether through water, pollination, shade for livestock, or even the recognition that comes from taking part in the pact.”
Carried out across six Brazilian states, the new study examined 2-hectare (5-acre) plots that underwent reforestation and compared them with neighboring areas that hadn’t. This approach allowed researchers to determine how much of the forest regeneration could be directly attributed to the program’s actions.
A second comparison looked at the areas supported by the program before restoration (from 2000-2009) and after (from 2010-2018). The results show that restored areas recovered up to 20% more forest cover than they would have without the program’s assistance across 4,600 hectares.
The authors note that this estimate is likely conservative, since satellite imagery has well-known limitations. It often fails to detect the earliest stages of reforestation, for instance, and can be affected by cloud cover.
The bill is high
“I believe that the biggest barrier to large-scale forest restoration is its cost,” says Jennifer Alix-García, a co-author of the study and professor of applied economics at Oregon State University in the U.S.
Interviews with landowners, NGOs, government representatives and consultants included in the study reveal several factors that influence restoration decisions, from high upfront costs and the need for technical assistance to financing and legal obligations to maintain native vegetation.
Although restoration faces significant challenges, with costs that can reach up to $8,000 per hectare (about $3,200 per acre), the pact seeks to ease these barriers through a decentralized network and by promoting more accessible techniques. Costs can drop to around $1,000/hectare ($400/acre) when using assisted natural regeneration.
Assisted natural regeneration is a technique that relies on the forest’s own ability to recover, but with strategic human help. Instead of planting trees, landowners allow local vegetation to grow back naturally while removing barriers to its return — such as by controlling invasive species, keeping livestock out of the area, and enriching the site with native species when needed. This approach is cheaper, faster and often more effective when remnants of native forest and seed sources are still present.
Other strategies, such as prioritizing restoration farther away from urban centers, can also help make investments more effective.
“We have seen a series of mechanisms that can bring an economic return to restoration, such as agroforestry systems, payments for environmental services, or even the carbon market, which has been heating up,” says Alex Fernando Mendes, executive secretary of the Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact and a co-author of the study. “These are situations that mobilize and bring more and more actors and landowners into this context.”
Why private lands matter more than ever
“Brazil has long been on the forefront of environmental policy in Latin America because it recognizes both the real costs to farmers and the important benefits that forests offer to everyone,” Alix-García says.
The Brazilian Forest Code, the national law regulating the protection of native vegetation, requires rural landowners to maintain part of their property under native vegetation, both in the legal reserve and in permanent protection areas. In practice, however, compliance is very low: an estimated 6.2 million hectares (15.3 million acres) of native vegetation that should be preserved on private lands in the Atlantic Forest simply isn’t there.
According to the study, Brazilian states that rigorously enforce environmental laws see more effective, pact-supported restoration results. This is the case for states like Bahia and Paraná, which impose higher fines per hectare of forest per rural inhabitant.
The Atlantic Forest plays a critical role in safeguarding Brazil’s biodiversity, harboring an exceptional concentration of endemic species that are especially vulnerable to habitat loss. Many local birds, mammals and, most notably, amphibians rely on large, connected forested areas, yet today persist in scattered fragments and isolated patches. This biological richness stands in stark contrast to the biome’s low level of formal protection: less than 10% of the Atlantic Forest is covered by protected areas like conservation units.
“Although conservation units are very important because of the concentration of biodiversity they protect, many key areas are on private land,” says Alexandre Uezu, a research coordinator at the Institute for Ecological Research (IPÊ), a member institution of the pact. “Furthermore, we know that isolated units are not enough to ensure the long-term survival of the most sensitive and vulnerable species, which makes restoration on private properties essential for safeguarding biodiversity, as well as many ecosystem services.”
Much of the Atlantic Forest’s regeneration in Brazil takes place on private properties owned by farmers. Data from SOS Mata Atlântica, a Brazilian NGO dedicated to the conservation of the Atlantic Forest, shows that private landowners account for 45% of all restored land during from 1993-2002.
In addition to delivering environmental benefits, restoration also plays a significant economic role, especially in rural areas, by generating income for cooperatives, producers’ associations, seed networks and local organizations. On average, one job is created for every 2.4 hectares (5.9 acres) restored, underscoring the potential of this activity to expand employment opportunities across the biome.
“Restoration is no longer just a dream or a promise,” Siqueira says. “We have data, we have numbers, we have concrete evidence that it happens, even on private land. Restoration is already reality and it happens in a Brazilian way — with creativity, partnership and persistence.”
Banner image: Ocelot in Parque Estadual Encontro das Águas, Brazil. Image by Giles Laurent via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Citations:
Toto, R., Alix-García, J., Sims, K. R. E., Coutinho, B., Muñoz Brenes, C., Pugliese, L., & Mendes, A. F. (2025). Evidence on scaling forest restoration from the Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact in Brazil. Nature Communications, 16(1), 4715. doi:10.1038/s41467-025-59194-3
Jenkins, C. N., Alves, M. A. S., Uezu, A., & Vale, M. M. (2015). Patterns of vertebrate diversity and protection in Brazil. PLOS ONE, 10(12), e0145064. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0145064
Brancalion, P. H. S., Siqueira, L. P., Amazonas, N. T., Rizek, M. B., Mendes, A. F., Santiami, E. L., … Chaves, R. B. (2022). Ecosystem restoration job creation potential in Brazil. People and Nature, 4(6), 1426-1434. doi:10.1002/pan3.10370
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