As the 2026 El Niño strengthens across the Amazon, new research is drawing attention to a conservation priority that often receives less emphasis: protecting forests that are still standing from damage caused by fires and logging.
Efforts to stop deforestation and restore cleared land are central to many conservation programs. But a new study published in Science suggests that preventing disturbances within existing forests, including selective logging and wildfires, can sometimes deliver the greatest benefits for the money spent.
An international research team from the UK, Brazil, Sweden and Australia, led by scientists at Lancaster University, carried out what the researchers describe as the first systematic comparison of its kind. The team evaluated different strategies for protecting existing forests and restoring forests on agricultural land.
Comparing Conservation Strategies Across the Amazon
The study examined more than three million hectares in Santarém and Paragominas, two regions in the Brazilian state of Pará, over the period from 2010 to 2020.
Researchers combined high-resolution satellite imagery with extensive field observations. Their dataset included 381 survey transects across 38 catchments and 499 rural properties, along with models charting the distributions of 160 bird species and 426 tree species.
The team then used observed changes in land use to construct counterfactual scenarios. These models allowed the researchers to estimate what might have happened to biodiversity and forest carbon stocks under different conservation approaches compared with what actually occurred.
They also calculated the costs associated with each strategy, making it possible to compare how much environmental benefit each intervention could provide for the resources invested.
"These findings highlight the need to put in place policies and resources to prevent and tackle the wildfires that disturb and degrade tropical forests," said Professor Jos Barlow, of Lancaster University and senior author of the study.
"This is all the more urgent in this El Niño year. These events, combined with climate change, result in longer, hotter and more intense dry seasons across the Amazon's 'arc of deforestation', greatly increasing the extent and severity of forest fires."
Protecting Standing Forests Produced Major Gains
Preventing damage to forests emerged as especially important. Measures that reduced disturbances generated the largest benefits for forest biodiversity and were nearly as important as preventing outright deforestation when it came to safeguarding carbon stocks.
"While no one strategy is a silver bullet, our results provide clear evidence that we should begin by prioritizing the forests we have left," said Dr. Leonardo Miranda, of Lancaster University and lead author of the study. "And protection must go beyond avoiding deforestation. Avoiding forest disturbances from wildfires or logging delivered the greatest benefits for forest biodiversity."
Forest restoration also provided meaningful benefits, particularly on properties where much of the original forest had already disappeared.
Across the entire study area, however, restoring forest on agricultural land was less effective when used by itself. It was also the most expensive of the strategies evaluated. The findings suggest that conservation funding should be tailored to the conditions of individual landscapes rather than relying on a single appr…