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4w ago

Study Links Well-Forested Indigenous Amazon Lands to Lower Disease Risk

The findings are correlational with benefits observed only when forest cover remains relatively high.

FILE - Ashaninka's territory sits along the winding Amonia River in Acre state, Brazil, June 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Jorge Saenz, File)
An Indigenous Tikuna man in the Amazon Rainforest in Colombia. Some researchers oppose the idea that human cultures would have been limited and determined by the environment, and that supports the notion that human cultures have modified the environment as desired. Image by Rhett Ayers Butler/Mongabay.
FILE - A fisherman walks to his boat in Santa Rosa, Peru, an island on the Amazon River on Aug. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia, File)
FILE - Firefighters work to put out a blaze in the Amazon forest during a drought and high temperatures in the rural municipality of Careiro Castanho, Amazonas state, Brazil, Oct. 21, 2023. (AP Photo/Edmar Barros, File)

Overview

  • A peer-reviewed analysis in Communications Earth & Environment links Indigenous Territories to reduced incidence of 27 fire-related and zoonotic or vector-borne diseases across the Amazon basin from 2000 to 2019.
  • Protective associations appear in regions with roughly 45% or greater forest cover and low fragmentation, whereas degraded or sparse forests weaken or can reverse the effect.
  • Legal recognition strengthens the health benefits, while unrecognized territories are associated with worse outcomes where fires and deforestation are more prevalent.
  • Authors point to plausible mechanisms including trees filtering smoke pollution from fires, reduced human–animal contact, and intact biodiversity limiting spillover risk.
  • Outside experts emphasize that the study is correlational and caution against overinterpreting a single forest-cover threshold, with the release timed to fire season and attention on COP30 in Belém.