small gold dredge mining partnerships needed

Monitoring and stopping illegal mining is difficult in this part of the world because of the vast size and sheer remoteness of the Amazon region.

Thomson Reuters Foundation/Chris Arsenault. The long-term effects of erosion and sediment degradation affect riverbeds and strategic fish populations vital to the Amazonian food chain, threatening the food supply of the 34 million inhabitants of the Amazon basin.Ī mining boat in the Madeira River in Brazil releases water and sediment which had been sucked into the boat as part of the process in extracting gold from the river on June 4, 2017. However, the impact is severe: The activity contaminates the Amazon River and its tributaries with mercury, slowly poisoning the Amazon’s indigenous peoples through the fish they consume. Unlike terrestrial mining-which leaves vast visible scars on the landscape-alluvial mining, sifting through riverbeds to find precious metals, often passes unnoticed because of the small size and high mobility of the mining barges. At times numbering in the hundreds in a single river, illegal mining barges prowl nearly all of the Amazon’s tributaries, which are large rivers too.Īn aerial view shows hundreds of dredging rafts operated by illegal miners who have gathered in a gold rush on the Madeira, a major tributary of the Amazon River, in Autazes, Amazonas state, Brazil, November 23, 2021. The sustained attack is staggering in scale, affecting all nine countries that make up the Amazon biome.

The Amazon rainforest-the largest and most biodiverse forest on Earth-is in peril from illegal gold mining activity in its rivers.

Small gold dredge mining partnerships needed