Where others see crucial ecosystems, Bolsonaro sees potential for economic gain by opening those reserves to industry. “Where there is indigenous land,” he has said, “there is wealth underneath it.”

The current deforestation rate in Brazil is roughly 2,700 sq miles (7,000 sq km) a year. To comply with its Paris Accord obligations, the country would need to cut that by two thirds, according to National Geographic.

Rondônia, a state in western Brazil on the Bolivian border, has become one of the most deforested parts of the Amazon over the last 30 years. Protected areas haven’t been completely spared, but the pace of deforestation is dramatically reduced within them:

The Amazon is dotted with 462 indigenous reserves, but very few—just 8% of that count—have been formally demarcated. Just last month, the Brazilian government recognized an 8,000 sq mile (2.1 million hectare) reserve called the Kaxuyana-Tunayana, on the border of Pará and Amazonas state, for demarcation. At least 18 different indigenous groups live within that plot, Mongabay reports. With its demarcation in limbo, it stands to reason that the Kaxuyana-Tunayana and others like it may be among the lands at risk from the Bolsonaro presidency.

Bolsonaro has said he plans to do away with the Brazilian environment ministry, fusing it with the country’s agricultural ministry. He has also proposed a 541 mile (870 km) paved highway through protected forest, according to Scientific American.

As Wired notes, to fulfill his aspirations, Bolsonaro would need to amend Brazil’s Forest Code, a national law that states that private landowners can only deforest 20% of the land they own in the Amazon, and must leave the remaining 80% covered by native vegetation.

But whatever the eventual outcome of Bolsonaro’s efforts to maneuver through the legal process required to make these changes, his electoral victory has reportedly emboldened loggers, miners, and poachers to encroach on indigenous lands, leaving indigenous communities vulnerable to attack and their land vulnerable to exploitation.

“Many brothers tell us there are invasions, people entering the territories with no regard for the rules and no fear of the authorities,” Beto Marubo, a native leader from the Javari Valley Indigenous Land in Brazil’s far-western borderlands, told National Geographic.

And as for what happens to unprotected land under Bolsonaro’s vision of Brazil? The precedent is clear:

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