Balancing tracks and trees: Assessing railroad impact on Brazilian biodiversity

Societal Impact Statement The Brazilian West–East Integration Railway (FIOL) aims to boost the national economy by improving commodity transport; however, it crosses three of Brazil's most biodiverse and fragile regions: the Caatinga, Cerrado and Atlantic Forest. Using digitised plant records and land‐use analyses, our study reveals significant vegetation loss within the railway's area of influence between 2002 and 2021, particularly in the Cerrado. At least 13 species of high conservation value lost over 10% of their distribution area. These findings highlight the need to identify highly threatened species and promote sustainable practices that protect biodiversity while supporting economic development. Summary The Brazilian West–East Integration Railway (FIOL) establishes a logistical transportation corridor to enhance the distribution of the country's commodities. Spanning 1527 km, it crosses transversally from the eastern coast to the interior of the country. Herbarium data, now widely accessible, have proven valuable for reconstructing the ecological history of specific regions. Here, we propose leveraging plant species records within the railway's area of influence, combined with species distribution modelling and temporal land‐use change analysis, to assess which species of high conservation value have experienced loss of suitable habitat and to better understand the project's potential impacts on the flora. To accomplish this, we extracted herbarium records from GBIF using spatial queries within polygons covering the railway's area of influence to identify threatened species. We then developed distribution models for 104 species considered of high conservation value and integrated these with analyses of natural vegetation loss between 2002 and 2021. We identified 2217 native species within the railway's area of influence, of which 1000 are endemic and 120 are classified as threatened. Spatial analyses revealed significant native vegetation loss between 2002 and 2021, a period characterised by the expansion of agricultural areas alongside the beginning of railway construction. By integrating species occurrence data with vegetation loss, we found that 13 species of high conservation value lost more than 10% of their distribution area. The Cerrado emerged as a priority region, where railway construction poses a particularly high risk to the persistence of threatened species.