The effects of illegal gold mining on Peru’s Amazon rainforest are well known:
The practices of about 5,000 illegal miners have led to pollution, violence, deforestation and the destruction of wildlife.
A recent governmental study estimates that about 40,000 hectares of rainforest have been wiped out.
But what does this damage actually look like?
Earlier this month, Peru’s environment ministry joined with the Carnegie Airborne Observatory to fly over the Amazon and film the damage.
Here is what they saw, narrated (in Spanish) by journalist Guido Lombardi:
“It’s like you put a piece of the desert in the middle of the Amazon,” Lombardi says about the deforestation that took only three years to complete.
See also: Devastating cost of illegal mining in Peru higher than ever thought: government
4 Comments
lobozapato
And always thought that ‘artesanal mining’ is a wonderful cute idea bred by social-driven NGOs, supported by the UN and so on. Now we can see what the results are.
LAMB
The rest of the world should be alarmed at this deforestation – remember that the AMAZON is THE WORLDS major source of Oxygen generation – lose it and we lose EARTH. I saw Artisanal Miners in Nicaragua and was appalled at their use of Mercury to recover Gold, the tailings & Mercury going into the same stream that the local Village used for their drinking water. Women and children would pan the tailings to recover residual gold, becoming exposed to Mercury in the process. Sad to see.
sergio pastor
Me parece que Guido Lombardi o es un ignorante de como solucionar este problema llamando a una ocupacion i usurpacion de la soverania del Peruana por intereses extrajeros o le han pagado los famosos ecologistas muchos$$$.
Si son 5,000 mineros agarrenlos de los cojones y trainndanlos a la justicia tan simple como eso!!!!
Pero los politicos peruanos ellos cierran los ojos a esta devastacion criminal por que ellos quieren VOTOS Y $$$$$$
Sergio Pastor , Geologist.
cummulusz
Superimpose a modern large-scale open pit mine like the OK Tedi gold-copper mine in the Amazon and you would get something very similar, though a bit less contamination. 300,000 hectares is what the mine owners accept that they will destroy (6x the deforestation in the Madre de Dios). Then there is the large-scale contamination of the Fly River. So much for the myth of modern mining. All mining is bad news, and all mining should be strictly regulated, and neither modern nor artisanal mining have a place in places like the Madre de Dios.