Extreme drought and heat lead to alarming mortality of Amazon fauna

ABSTRACT The ongoing destruction of the Amazon Forest in Brazil is causing increasing distress to its fauna, leading to alarming mortality among terrestrial and aquatic animals. An El Niño year, 2023 brought extreme drought with record-breaking high temperatures. This, combined with massive amounts of smoke from the many forest fires going on in the biome lead to extremely poor air quality in the Amazon. In this article, we address this issue by providing fieldwork information on the consequences of that extreme drought. We found 19 dead animals (mostly mammals) from October to December 2023, in 16 permanent plots and trails in an urban forest fragment. This is the first time, to our knowledge, that such high mortality rates have been registered in the area. The mortality of terrestrial animals is likely to increase not only as a consequence of extreme droughts, but also due to the combined effects of high temperatures and poor air quality, with severe consequences for fragmented areas.