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.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |