Hannah Ernst

The leather industry is the single largest driver of deforestation of the Amazon rainforest.

This article will assess exactly how leather production and deforestation are linked, why cattle ranching is particularly bad for the Amazon and what could change now that Brazil has a new president.

When we think of deforestation, we often think of palm oil, soy, or paper. However, when the World Resources Institute overlapped maps of raw material production areas with maps of tree cover loss, they found that cattle erased nearly twice as much forestry as all other commodities combined (oil palm, soy, cocoa, rubber, coffee, and wood fibre).