RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil, Aug 21, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - The area of Amazon rainforest lost to fires in Brazil in July fell 65 percent compared to a year ago, the MapBiomas monitoring platform said Wednesday, boosting the government as it prepares to host the UN climate change conference.

Satellite images showed that 143,000 hectares (353,360 acres) of the world's biggest tropical forest were razed by fires last month, down dramatically from the same month last year, when a historic drought whipped up record numbers of fires.

The figure -- the smallest since MapBiomas began monthly satellite mapping of fire damage in 2019 -- comes three months before President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva hosts the COP30 UN conference in the Amazon city of Belem.

Across Brazil, 748,000 hectares of land were consumed by fire in July, down 40 percent on last year.

Between January and July, a total of 2.45 million hectares burned across Brazil, down 59 percent over the same period in 2024.

The Cerrado, a vast region of tropical savannah in central Brazil, suffered the worst destruction in July, with 571,000 hectares going up in flames, down 16 percent in a year.

Felipe Martenexen, a researcher at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, attributed the improvements to a "more intense and sustained rainy season" this year.

He added that the environmental and economic damage wrought by the 2024 fires and increased surveillance by the authorities of land clearance may also have "led farmers and residents to be more careful."

While drought abetted the spread of fires last year, many of the blazes were started illegally by people clearing land for agriculture.

Lula has pledged to end Amazon deforestation by 2030.