Amazon Day, 5 September 2025

This Amazon Day, learn more about this incredible habitat and how we're working to help protect it.

Protect the Amazon

On this day we celebrate the Amazon!

To coincide with Amazon Day, we’d like to invite you to get to know more about this amazing place. We've got some simple and fun ways to show your support; from learning some fascinating facts about sloths, to watching an Amazon expert Q&A livestream.

Researching jaguar refuges: A tale of two states

Feline guardian of the Amazon

The Amazon rainforest covers almost 60% of Brazil. In this vastness, realities vary. Some areas are already quite devastated, due to agribusiness and mining fires. Others are very well preserved, mainly due to the existence of Conservation Units (CUs), which are fundamental for the survival of the people who live inside and around them, as well as for the biodiversity they shelter, including the jaguar.
With partners and communities, WWF-Brazil has carried out collaborative jaguar monitoring projects in the states of Amapá and Amazonas to understand how CUs serve as a refuge for the largest feline in the Americas, and to inform ongoing conservation efforts for this feline guardian of the Amazon.
"Our focus is the jaguar, an animal at the top of the food chain, whose presence indicates that the environment is healthy. That is, its existence shows that the animals it feeds on are also existing, as are the plants these animals feed on. That is why its conservation is extremely important." - Felipe Feliciani, conservation analyst at WWF-Brazil
Aripuanã National Forest (Aripuanã FLONA) Southern Amazonas State

Located in a region experiencing the highest deforestation rates in the Amazon, the National Forest reconciles conservation with sustainable use of natural resources. The loss of forest in the wider state and use of forest resources within the CU can drive conflict between people and jaguars, so it’s important to understand more about the big cats living here.
72 camera traps were installed in 36 pairs. The camera pairs capture both sides of the jaguar, important for identifying individuals by their rosette markings and gaining insight into how may of the big cats occupy the monitored area. The 36 pairs are set 2 km apart forming a grid of monitoring stations that remained in place for 60 days. 12 people participated in the work, including 2 scientific coordinators and 10 local community members, who were trained on wildlife monitoring using camera traps. An area of 751,295 ha was surveyed and this is the first time this area has undergone such robust monitoring.
Of the resulting 9,577 camera records, 1,817 unique animal records were identified, revealing 57 different species (mammals, birds and reptiles). There were 13 records of jaguars, six different individuals, four males and two females.
The results obtained in the Aripuanã National Forest are encouraging, as they are similar to those obtained in less threatened areas, such as the Conservation Units of Amapá. “This already gives a good indication of the importance of protected areas as essential places for the conservation of biodiversity,” - Felipe Feliciani, conservation analyst at WWF-Brazil
Amapá National Forest (Amapá FLONA) Amapá State

Amapá has a vast coverage of Amazon rainforest, with 71.1% of its territory protected by parks, reserves and Indigenous lands. However, this is one of the areas of the Amazon with the greatest gap in scientific knowledge. With partners, WWF-Brazil developed a jaguar monitoring project across 460,361 ha in the CU to start addressing this.
Following the same methodology applied in Aripuanã FLONA, with more than 15 people, including professionals, technicians and field assistants,15,856 animal videos were recorded. 1,588 of these were mammals. According to Felipe Feliciani, some of the species that aroused the greatest interest are 9 records of jaguars (Panthera onca), 3 of puma (Puma concolor), 99 of tapir (Tapirus terrestris), 413 of peccary (Tayassu pecari) and 285 of collared peccary (Pecari tajacu), several of them with groups of young and adult individuals. Lots of jaguar prey!
Biologist Dayse Ferreira, who helped plan camera placement and participated in the installation says that the work was hard, especially due to the distances that had to be covered in the middle of the forest, “Carrying equipment in the rain and spending hours in the boat in the sun…” She also screened all the camera trap records “There were many hours in front of the computer and thousands of files reviewed,” she says.
Reports of jaguar attacks on livestock have been increasing in the region, so the need for long-term monitoring to inform human-jaguar coexistence efforts is key.
WWF plan to repeat monitoring into the future in these areas and beyond, continuing to inform conservation efforts and give us insight into the status of jaguars and forest health in the Amazon.

Find out more

Top facts about the Amazon

Here are our top facts about the Amazon.

Amazon facts

Top 10 facts about sloths

Discover more information about sloths, the issues and threats they are facing, and what you can do to help.

Sloth facts

World Amazon Day Activities

© Emmanuel Rondeau / WWF France

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Why care about the Amazon? | WWF Expert Q&A

Why should you care about the Amazon? The rainforest is fast approaching an irreversible tipping point, which could spell disaster. But what would happen if the Amazon disappeared? And what can the UK do about it? This Amazon Day, our WWF Latin America experts Bel Lyon and Jamie Gordon are going live to answer all your questions about the Amazon, its importance in the fight against climate change and the urgent need for action to protect it.
Watch the livestream
© Andy Robert Davies

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Colour in a rainforest scene

Download our colouring sheet for lots of rainforest fun!
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© Gemma Lawson

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Make your own hiking stick

All explorers need a sturdy stick. Why not make your own unique hiking pole?
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The Amazon shrouded in smoke

Following a historic drought between June and November 2023, the Amazon has experienced over 42,000 fires from January 1 to August 19 2024, according to Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE). This is the highest number of fires in nearly two decades, severely impacting the region's environment and air quality. In August 2024, fires significantly deteriorated air quality in Bolivia too, severely impacting vulnerable populations such as children, the elderly and those with respiratory conditions, underscoring the urgent need for enhanced firefighting efforts. Scientists warn that surpassing the 1.5°C threshold will lead to more extreme and irreversible events, such as increased droughts and wildfires.

Amazon Day, 5 September 2025

On this day we celebrate the Amazon!

Researching jaguar refuges: A tale of two states

Feline guardian of the Amazon

Aripuanã National Forest (Aripuanã FLONA) Southern Amazonas State

Amapá National Forest (Amapá FLONA) Amapá State