Illegal mining on ‘epidemic’ scale
ENVIRONMENTAL enforcement agents deep in the Amazon rainforest swooped down on an illegal mine in a dawn raid early last month, in a campaign to crack down on such activities that environmental groups say have reached epidemic scale.
The operation was carried out against a handful of what are now known to be hundreds of illegal Amazon mines in Brazil that have been catalogued for the first time in a study released earlier this month.
The project, coordinated by Brazilian advocacy group Instituto Socioambiental, maps all illegal mines in the Amazon rain forest, which sprawls across Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia.
As government helicopters descended along a river that had become stagnant pools ravaged by miners digging for gold, many of the miners fled deep into the rain forest.
Shortly after, half a dozen were apprehended for questioning by camouflaged agents bearing machine guns.
The real target is not the muddy and often barefoot miners, who work in slavelike conditions for unknown local strongmen, agents of Brazil’s environmental agency, Ibama, say. The primary target is the excavators and other heavy machinery, which is expensive and harder to replace.
Unable to haul away the machines, the agents set fire to them, sending plumes of smoke hundreds of feet into the air.
The raids last month targeted several illegal mines in two national parks in Brazil’s Amazon. While the battle was won, this month’s study indicates the war is far from over.
Brazil is home to 453 illegal Amazon mines, according to a mapping project that is part of the Amazon Socioenvironmental, Georeferenced Information Project, a joint initiative between Instituto Socioambiental and other environmental groups. The first attempt to map all the region’s illegal mines has recorded 2500 such operations across six Amazon countries, coordinator Alicia Rolla said.
One aim of the project was to call attention to the ‘‘epidemic’’ scale of the illegal mining problem, which polluted local communities’ water with mercury and contributed to deforestation, she said.
She hoped environmental agencies would use it as a tool to help police the mines.
Ibama needs more resources if it is to break up the hundreds of mines, she added.
‘‘The studies show that illegal mining is increasing a lot. I think the Government needs to be more worried about giving Ibama more resources to do their job.’’ — Reuters