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.<\/p>\n
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, Conservaci\u00f3n Amaz\u00f3nica, found.<\/p>\n
The gold rush is also poisoning its waterways. Illegal miners use dredges \u2013 floating machines that chew up and spit out riverbeds \u2013 leaving the toxic mercury used to extract gold from sediment in their wake.<\/p>\n
Ultra-high resolution aerial images allowed MAAP 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.<\/p>\n
The Amazon Rainforest in Peru. Photograph: mariusz_prusaczyk\/Getty Images\/iStockphoto<\/p>\n
\u201cWe used to only see it in the Madre de Dios region but now we\u2019re seeing it everywhere\u201d, said MAAP\u2019s director, Matt Finer.<\/p>\n
The price of gold topped $4,000<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n MAAP\u2019s aerial images<\/a> show that once dense swathes of green jungle are being transformed into lifeless moonscapes of grey earth pocked with stagnant pools of green water.<\/p>\n \u201cThis little square is just a tiny sample,\u201d Finer says, pointing to a small section of the vast red patchwork of deforestation mapped in the report. \u201cImagine this multiplied to 140,000 hectares.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n A recent<\/a> study of riverside communities in Peru\u2019s northernmost region of Loreto found the median level of mercury was nearly four times the World Health Organization\u2019s recommended limit.<\/p>\n MAAP\u2019s analysis found that 225 rivers and streams have been affected, with 989 dredges spotted in Loreto since 2017 \u2013 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.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThey are poisoning our rivers \u2013 it\u2019s the water that we drink,\u201d said Roberto Tafur Shupingahua, a representative of several riverside communities in Loreto.<\/p>\n A miner in Peru extracts gold using mercury. Photograph: Nacho Doce\/Reuters<\/p>\n Shupingahua said local communities began blocking miners from advancing up the River Tigre in Loreto 40 days ago, leading to gunfights with armed intruders. \u201cWe have no choice but to fight back but we are alone. The state is nowhere to be seen,\u201d he said, his voice raising in anger.<\/p>\n Mining remains concentrated in the Madre de Dios region in southern Peru but new hotspots are emerging farther north in Loreto, Amazonas, Hu\u00e1nuco, Pasco and Ucayali.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n The planet’s most important stories. Get all the week’s environment news – the good, the bad and the essential<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the first time we\u2019ve 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n MAAP\u2019s report showed more dredges appearing on Peru\u2019s jungle frontiers with Bolivia, Brazil and Colombia.<\/p>\n With gold prices surpassing $4,000 an ounce, foreign, armed groups are increasingly venturing across the border into Peru\u2019s lawless jungles where local authorities are doing little to stop them, says Bram Ebus, a criminologist and consultant for the International Crisis Group.<\/p>\n