Three years of relative peace with rebels in Colombia has opened once-forbidding jungles to settlers. Illegal gold mining is fueling forest loss in Peru. Cattle ranchers in Bolivia are razing rainforest to meet beef demand in China.

Deforestation at breakneck rates is depleting vast expanses of Amazon forest contained in South American countries neighboring Brazil. Forest loss in those nations, which host roughly 40 percent of the Amazon, underscores how the fires now ravaging parts of Brazil and provoking global alarm are just one piece of a broader regional crisis.

The push by land speculators, ranchers and miners into forests around the Amazon basin also shows how advances in political stability and economic integration can drive deforestation, especially when safeguards remain weak.