Bolsonaro’s easing of gun control fueled illegal hunting, study indicates

“I want everyone armed!” Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s statement during a cabinet meeting in May 2020 signaled the fulfillment of a presidential campaign promise he made in 2018. During that meeting, he demanded that his ministers sign a decree raising the limit on civilian ammunition purchases. Throughout his campaign and his term, Bolsonaro aggressively promoted and implemented a progun agenda with a direct impact on illegal wildlife hunting, data show.

“I want everyone armed!” Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s statement during a cabinet meeting in May 2020 signaled the fulfillment of a presidential campaign promise he made in 2018. During that meeting, he demanded that his ministers sign a decree raising the limit on civilian ammunition purchases. Throughout his campaign and his term, Bolsonaro aggressively promoted and implemented a progun agenda with a direct impact on illegal wildlife hunting, data show.

According to 2023 data compiled by nonprofit institutes Igarapé and Sou da Paz, the number of guns in private collections held by Brazilian civilians and military personnel nearly doubled to 3 million between 2019 and 2022 — that is, during the Bolsonaro administration. In 2018, that figure stood at just over 1.3 million, with nearly half belonging to the military.

Policy enacted under Bolsonaro significantly eased access to firearms, particularly for a group known in Brazil as CACs — an acronym for hunters, sport shooters and collectors.

According to the survey, CACs purchased 59,000 weapons in 2018. By 2022, that figure stood at 430,000. Over the same period, the group’s share of the country’s private arsenal jumped from nearly 27% to 42.5%, making CACs the primary owners of private firearms in Brazil, overtaking the military. This surge in gun access championed by Bolsonaro has become a primary driver of illegal wildlife hunting in the country.

A new study led by Brazilian researchers to be published in the journal Biological Conservation analyzed 11 variables across three categories: Demographics and accessibility; ecological context; and political and economic context. The goal was to identify which factors were related with a higher probability of poaching across all Brazilian municipalities.

The researchers built a model using data from 2,046 social media posts documenting illegal hunting of native animals. Roughly 95% of these posts were shared between 2019 and 2020 by residents in 790 municipalities across 27 Brazilian states, spanning the country’s five major regions.

The survey showed at least 4,658 animals killed, from 157 native species, including 75 bird species (47.8%), 51 mammals (32.5%), 26 reptiles (16.6%), and five amphibians (3.1%). The researchers then applied their model to all of Brazil’s more than 5,500 municipalities.

“What we did was take information from official statistics in Brazil that could actually have some relationship with hunting, based on [scientific] literature, so we used an existing theoretical basis to select the variables,” study lead author Hani El Bizri, a researcher at RedeFauna, told Mongabay.

They analyzed human population density, accessibility via rivers and roads, remaining natural areas, defaunation (depletion of local wildlife), internet access and per capita GDP. These factors helped establish a clear pattern of illegal “sport” hunting.

“There were already indications that factors could have an effect [on hunting], but the political and the gun aspects were not as clear,” El Bizri said. To examine this phenomenon, he explained, the team factored in the percentage of votes Bolsonaro received in each municipality. Based on the results, they inferred that expanded access to guns directly increased the likelihood that they would be used for illegal hunting.

The findings show that poaching occurs across nearly the entire country. However, the North region had the highest number of cities with actual cases. In Rondônia, Amazonas and Pará, nearly 50% of towns recorded hunting events. Nationwide, Rio Grande do Sul and Pará had the highest number of municipalities with documented hunting cases.

“In general, it is a very large representation [of hunting] for some regions. And this shows how highly widespread the activity is,” El Bizri said. “Speaking specifically about the political part, we found that access to weapons was highly related to the probability of hunting.”

Impacts on biodiversity

Poaching places strong pressure on Brazil’s biodiversity. When combined with habitat loss, its impacts compound to threaten species across various groups and sizes.

“Hunting is one of the clearest reasons we see for defaunation, especially for species over 10 kg [22 lbs],” study coauthor Juliano Bogoni, a researcher at Mato Grosso State University, told Mongabay. “If we have a government that doesn’t care about this, people will certainly feel a bit more comfortable carrying out this activity, which has been banned since 1967 and illegal since 1998. And there seems to be a very clear pattern showing that this hunting is completely unnecessary. These are people who have access to animal protein. It’s not subsistence hunting or constitutionally and legally protected traditional hunting. It’s illegal hunting, and it also seems to be quite competitive.”

Clarissa Rosa, a researcher at the National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA) who has studied illegal hunting since 2013, said the study sheds light on a legally permitted practice in Brazil: Wild boar hunting by civilians to manage invasive species and protect the environment and agriculture. Introduced in southern Brazil in the early 20th century, wild boars have since spread across the country. Culling wild boars with firearms has been permitted since 2013, but it often serves as a loophole for purchasing heavy weapons.

“These article’s results are interesting even to see how we address the wild boar issue from now on in terms of guns, because they won’t die from just any type of weapon; it takes heavy weaponry, otherwise they survive,” Rosa told Mongabay. “There has always been this discussion about what will happen if we start releasing such large-caliber weapons and how it can be controlled so it doesn’t end up turning against native species. The right thing would be for the state to have a more active role in controlling wild boars and take this responsibility away from the population.”

The Arc of Deforestation: ‘A pressure cooker’

The study found a high concentration of illegal hunting in municipalities within the Amazon’s so-called Arc of Deforestation. This expanding agricultural frontier, which spans the states of Mato Grosso, Pará, Rondônia, Amazonas, Acre and Maranhão, emerged as the primary hotspot for poaching.

“The Arc of Deforestation has been a pressure cooker for different environmental issues, and we saw that this very area is a heavy [poaching] hotspot,” El Bizri said. “You have large landowners there with access to guns, and these are areas where support for Bolsonaro is high and they are on the verge of defaunation due to environmental degradation. But there is still Amazon left there. So, you have the perfect system for illegal hunting to happen. It continues to happen all over Brazil, but it’s much stronger there.”

According to Rosa, areas dominated by large monoculture plantations are linked to intense hunting. “The plantations end up attracting many animals that go there to feed, such as white-lipped peccaries and collared peccaries. In fact, some of these animals even experience a population boom, and this is used as an excuse to hunt.” She described the cycle behind that: “Deforestation reduces the natural environment, and the animals won’t necessarily die immediately; they will move to other areas, which are cultivated because there are no more native areas left. So, they will be much more exposed.”

Historically, the Arc of Deforestation accounts for the vast majority of tree cover loss detected by satellite monitoring — approximately 75% of all forest clearance in the Amazon biome.

“The depletion of wildlife on the frontier of the Arc of Deforestation is much more severe and rapid than anywhere else,” Bogoni said. “There, populations will not recover. Those that do not perish from habitat loss will perish from hunting; they will get shot.”

Beginning in July 2025, Brazil’s Federal Police took over regulation and registration of CACs from the military to improve control. In light of their findings, the researchers recommend strict gun controls and increased enforcement, particularly in the areas identified as poaching hotspots. They also advocate for a multifaceted strategy combining educational initiatives with technologies like drones and cameras in protected areas.

“It’s a hunting epidemic. It is spread everywhere and is being reproduced,” El Bizri said. “Hunting is environmental degradation, a silent impact; people don’t see it. It’s not like fire burning everything or climate change floodings that kill animals. It’s silent, it’s hidden. So, the warning is that when you vote for a government with an anti-environmental agenda, you’re voting for an agenda with effects you can’t control.”

According to Bogoni, “these people won’t stop hunting until the last animal stops moving.”

This story was reported by Mongabay Brazil’s team and first published here on our Portuguese site on July 22, 2026.

Banner image: Brazil’s then-President Jair Bolsonaro makes a gun gesture with his hand during the opening of the March of Mayors in Brasília, in April 2022. Image by Eraldo Peres/AP photo. 

Citation:

El Bizri, H. R., Morcatty, T. Q., Oliveira, M. A., Rampini, A. P., Knoop, S., Fa, J. E., … Bogoni, J. A. (2026). Anti-environmental political agendas, firearm deregulation and illegal hunting in Brazil. Biological Conservation, 321, 111989. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2026.111989

Cite this article

Adele Santelli (2026). Bolsonaro’s easing of gun control fueled illegal hunting, study indicates. Mongabay Conservation news. DOI: https://doi.org/10.66709/news-325619