Is The Amazon River Being Polluted? Illegal Gold Mining Reportedly Damaging Waterway

The landscape of Amazon forest spans 1.4 billion acres of dense forests that is a part of several developing South American countries, including: Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela. Over the past few decades, environmentalists have been growing concerned about the future of the forest, as rain forests are being destroyed at a record pace. And the concern is valid: The Amazon houses more than half of the world's 10 million species of animals, insects and plants, and an estimated one-fifth of the world's fresh water is in the Amazon Basin. There is even a correlation between the global climate and the Amazon, as the 90-140 billion metric tons of carbon in the Amazon helps stabilize the climate.

Generally speaking, the destruction of the Amazon forest has been blamed on illegal logging, unsustainable extraction of natural resources, oil exploration and overharvesting of aquatic species. But now there's news of illegal gold mining in Peru which is playing a part in depleting the Amazon forests. It all began when a new study discovered small mines in Peru that were previously unknown. Located in the Madre de Dios region of Peru, the area is considered to be a biodiversity hotspot. Unfortunately, courtesy of the global financial crisis in 2008 which increased the value of gold, miners have made their way to the area to look for gold.

The damage done by the illegal miners, who number in the thousands, have done some serious damage--illegal gold mining has wiped out 15, 180 acres of the forest per year since 2008, according to the Carnegie Institution for Science and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Unfortunately, that's not all. Miners use mercury to extract gold from soil and as a result, tons of mercury have been dumped in the water causing the water to be poisoned. The water quality damage builds on the other forms of destruction the illegal miners create, including carving up the forest floor and riverbeds.

"Our results reveal far more rainforest damage than previously reported by the government, NGOs, or other researchers," said Greg Asner, the American scientist who led the study, in a statement, reports Voxxi. "The gold rush in Madre de Dios exceeds the combined effects of all other causes of forest loss in the region, including from logging, ranching and agriculture." Asner added: "This is really important because we are talking about a global biodiversity hotspot. The region's incredible flora and fauna is being lost to gold forever."

"We are using this study to warn Peruvians on the terrible impact of illegal mining in one of the most important enclaves of biodiversity in the world, a place that we have vowed, as a nation, to protect for all humanity," stated Ernesto Raez Luna, from Peru's Environment Ministry and co-author of the report with Asner. "Nobody should buy one gram of this jungle gold. The mining must be stopped."