The country's relatively rapid economic and demographic growth over the past century has meant that Brazil's ability to protect its environmental habitats is increasingly under threat.

Extensive logging of national forests, especially the Amazon, both official and unofficial, is destroying areas the size of a small country every year, as well as a diversity of plant and animal species.

More than one-fifth of Brazil's Amazon rainforest has been destroyed, and more than 70 mammals are endangered (deforestation and poaching). In the Atlantic Forest, nearly 93% of the forest has been cleared. Of the 202 endangered animals in Brazil, 171 are in the Atlantic Forest.