The Brazilian Amazon Protected Area Network was largely unaffected by recent fires

August 2019 saw dramatic increases in wildfires in the Brazilian Amazon, leading to arguments between Brazil and G7 leaders and widespread concern among conservationists. Popular media reports suggested that swathes of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil are on fire. Here we investigate the spatial distribution of fires through August 2019, showing that fires were largely restricted to deforested regions and areas with low canopy cover, particularly in unprotected areas that comprise half the region. In contrast, Brazils protected areas had one third as many fires, and forest in protected areas with high canopy cover was almost entirely unaffected by fire. Protected areas reduce deforestation and carbon emissions, and have proved largely untouched by recent fires. However, fires in closed-canopy forest cannot readily be detected by satellite remote-sensing and so this analysis likely underestimates the burned area in intact forest, both in protected and unprotected areas.