Pantanal

Study links tapir microplastic levels to intensity of nearby human land use

Researchers sampled lowland tapirs across three Brazilian sites with differing degrees of agricultural development—a Cerrado agricultural mosaic, the largely pristine Pantanal, and an Amazon farm bordering protected forest—to examine how land use affects microplastic exposure in wildlife. The study found that microplastic abundance in tapirs correlated with the degree of human land conversion at each site, with the most disturbed, agriculture-heavy landscape showing the highest levels.