🔗 Share this article

An illegal gold rush has wiped out 140,000 hectares of tropical forest in the Peruvian Amazon, accelerating as foreign, armed groups enter the area to profit from all-time high gold values, based on findings.

Approximately five hundred forty square miles of territory have been converted for extraction activities in the South American country since the mid-1980s, and the environmental destruction is spreading rapidly throughout Peru, analysis found.

This mining boom is also contaminating its waterways. Unlawful extractors use dredges – machines that disrupt and displace river bottoms – leaving toxic mercury employed to separate gold from sediment in their wake.

Ultra-high resolution aerial images enabled researchers to identify mining equipment together with deforestation for the first time, revealing that the ecological disaster previously limited to the south of the country was creeping northward.

“We used to only see it in the Madre de Dios region but now we’re seeing it across numerous areas,” stated an official involved in the research.

The price of gold surpassed four thousand dollars for the initial occasion this period on international markets as global anxiety increased about economic instability. Native communities have raised concerns that as the price soars, armed groups were more frequently tearing down their forests and contaminating their rivers in search for the precious metal.

Satellite photos show that once dense swathes of green jungle are being transformed into lifeless moonscapes of barren soil marked by standing water of green water.

“This little square is just a tiny sample,” an expert noted, indicating a limited area of the vast red patchwork of forest clearance mapped in the report. “Imagine this multiplied to one hundred forty thousand hectares.”

The mercury residues accumulate in aquatic life and pass to the populations who consume them, leading to health and cognitive issues such as congenital disorders and learning difficulties.

A recent investigation of riverside communities in Peru’s northernmost region of the Loreto region found the average concentration of mercury was nearly four times the safe threshold set by global health authorities.

Research found that hundreds of waterways have been affected, with 989 dredges observed in Loreto since recent years – including two hundred seventy-five this year alone on the Nanay River, a branch of the Amazon that is the lifeblood of natural habitats and many native populations.

“Our waterways are being contaminated – it’s the water that we drink,” said a representative of multiple local communities in Loreto.

Local communities began preventing extractors from moving along the Tigre River in the region 40 days ago, leading to armed clashes with militant groups. “We have no choice but to fight back but we are unsupported. The state is absent,” he expressed with anger.

Mining is mostly located in the southern area of Madre de Dios in the south of the country but emerging zones are developing in northern regions in Loreto, Amazonas, Huánuco, Pasco and Ucayali.

They are small but once mining is established it could grow rapidly, an expert noted, stating that the report was a glimpse into what was occurring across the rest of the Amazon.

“It marks the initial occasion we’ve been able to look in this detail at a country but I think in Brazil, Bolivia and Colombia we are going to see exactly the same thing,” he added.

Findings showed more dredges being detected on Peru’s jungle frontiers with Bolivia, Brazil and Colombia.

With gold prices surpassing $4,000 an ounce, international armed factions are more frequently entering into Peruvian territory into Peru’s lawless jungles where local authorities are taking minimal action to halt their activities, as stated by an expert on crime.

Illegal organizations, including factions from neighboring countries, are increasingly active across the border.

“International crime networks involved in drug trade and concealing illicit gains through illegal gold mining – now with peak prices providing hefty returns – are combined with a government that has failed to act decisively against criminal enterprises,” the expert remarked.

An intergovernmental group of South American countries instructed Peru to address unlawful extraction or it could face economic sanctions.

But an expert said: “The returns from gold are immense at present. There are no indications of prices going down, so it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better.”