Warnings for Amazon as goldmining dredges occupy river
Earlier DU thread: Gold rush draws hundreds of dredging rafts to Amazon tributary
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Source: The Guardian
‘It’s as if we’re in Mad Max’: warnings for Amazon as goldmining dredges occupy river
Hundreds of illegal goldmining dredges converge in search of metal as one activist describes it as a ‘free-for-all’
Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Wed 24 Nov 2021 17.04 GMT
Environmentalists are demanding urgent action to halt an aquatic gold rush along one of the Amazon River’s largest tributaries, where hundreds of illegal goldmining dredges have converged in search of the precious metal.
The vast flotilla – so large one local website compared it to a floating neighbourhood – reportedly began forming on the Madeira River earlier this month after rumours that a large gold deposit had been found in the vicinity.
“They’re making a gram of gold an hour down there,” one prospector claims in an audio recording obtained by the Estado de São Paulo newspaper.
Danicley Aguiar, an Amazon-based Greenpeace activist who flew over the mining flotilla on Tuesday, said he had been stunned by the magnitude of the illegal operation unfolding just 75 miles east of the city of Manaus.
“We’ve seen this kind of thing before in other places – but not on this scale,” Aguiar said of the hundreds of rafts he saw hoovering up the Madeira’s riverbed near the towns of Autazes and Nova Olinda do Norte.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/24/amazon-gold-rush-madeira-river-environmentalists
