Illegal gold mining clears 140,000 hectares of Peruvian Amazon

Armed criminal groups tear down precious rainforest to capitalise on record gold prices, report finds

An illegal gold rush has cleared 140,000 hectares of rainforest in the Peruvian Amazon and is accelerating as foreign, armed groups move into the region to profit from record gold prices, according to a report.

About 540 square miles of land have been cleared for mining in the South American country since 1984, and the environmental destruction is spreading rapidly across the country, Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) and its Peruvian partner organisation, Conservación Amazónica, found.

The gold rush is also poisoning its waterways. Illegal miners use dredges – floating machines that chew up and spit out riverbeds – leaving the toxic mercury used to extract gold from sediment in their wake.

Ultra-high resolution aerial images allowed MAAP, part of Amazon Conservation, to identify dredges alongside deforestation for the first time, enabling them to identify goldminers and revealing that the environmental crisis once confined to the south of the country was creeping north.

“We used to only see it in the Madre de Dios region but now we’re seeing it everywhere”, said MAAP’s director, Matt Finer.

The price of gold topped $4,000 for the first time this week on the international markets as global anxiety increased about financial fragility. Indigenous groups have sounded the alarm that as the price of soars, armed groups were increasingly tearing down their forests and poisoning their rivers in pursuit of the precious metal.

MAAP’s aerial images show that once dense swathes of green jungle are being transformed into lifeless moonscapes of grey earth pocked with stagnant pools of green water.

“This little square is just a tiny sample,” Finer says, pointing to a small section of the vast red patchwork of deforestation mapped in the report. “Imagine this multiplied to 140,000 hectares.”

The mercury residues build up in fish and pass to the people who eat them, leading to neurological and developmental problems such as birth defects and learning difficulties.

A recent study of riverside communities in Peru’s northernmost region of Loreto found the median level of mercury was nearly four times the World Health Organization’s recommended limit.

MAAP’s analysis found that 225 rivers and streams have been affected, with 989 dredges spotted in Loreto since 2017 – including 275 this year alone on the Nanay River, a tributary of the Amazon that is the lifeblood of ecosystems and dozens of Indigenous communities.

“They are poisoning our rivers – it’s the water that we drink,” said Roberto Tafur Shupingahua, a representative of several riverside communities in Loreto.

Shupingahua said local communities began blocking miners from advancing up the River Tigre in Loreto 40 days ago, leading to gunfights with armed intruders. “We have no choice but to fight back but we are alone. The state is nowhere to be seen,” he said, his voice raising in anger.

Mining remains concentrated in the Madre de Dios region in southern Peru but new hotspots are emerging farther north in Loreto, Amazonas, Huánuco, Pasco and Ucayali.

They are small but once mining is established it could expand quickly, Finer said, adding that the report was a glimpse into what was happening across the rest of the Amazon.

“This is the first time 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 said.

MAAP’s report showed more dredges appearing on Peru’s jungle frontiers with Bolivia, Brazil and Colombia.

With gold prices surpassing $4,000 an ounce, foreign, armed groups are increasingly venturing across the border into Peru’s lawless jungles where local authorities are doing little to stop them, says Bram Ebus, a criminologist and consultant for the International Crisis Group.

Criminal networks, including the Comandos de la Frontera from Colombia and Comando Vermelho from Brazil, are increasingly active across the border.

“International crime networks trafficking cocaine and laundering profits through illegal gold mining – now with peak prices providing hefty returns – are combined with a government in Lima that has not been a serious obstacle against organised crime,” Ebus said.

The Andean Group – a political coalition of South American countries – told Peru on Tuesday to get serious about illegal mining or it could face economic sanctions.

But Finer said: “Gold is just so profitable right now. I don’t see any signs of prices going down, so it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better.”

Cover photo:  Aerial image of Amazon forest transformed into a ‘lifeless moonscape of grey earth pocked with stagnant pools of green water’. Photograph: ACA/MAAP