Gold prices and poverty fuel illegal mining in Peru's Amazon

• Illegal mining has spread to the Loreto region in recent years
• Soaring gold prices and rising poverty make it appealing
• Hard to tackle as it becomes more prevalent in remote areas

The Nanay River meanders through Peru's Amazon jungle supplying water to Iquitos city's half a million inhabitants.

But there are growing concerns about the quality of this water as illegal gold mining, which uses the toxic metal mercury to extract gold, has surged in Peru's Amazon region since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Villagers in the northern rainforest region of Loreto have become more dependent on illegal mining for their livelihood as the pandemic hit the economy and the illegal activity became more profitable. Gold prices have soared nearly 30% so far in 2024 and are on course for their biggest annual rise since 2010.

The problem is that illegal miners use the metal to extract gold particles from the river silt and then burn off the mercury, which turns to vapour and is absorbed by the surrounding plants, soil and river, said Claudia Vega, head of the mercury programme at the Center for Amazonian Scientific Innovation.

Her team regularly tests communities and their main staple -- river fish -- for mercury.

"(Miners) take the gold but the mercury stays here in the Amazon," Vega told Context. "What the miners don't like to talk about is that mercury is a poison."

Illegal mining has spread across Peru's Amazon region and the Andes since the COVID-19 pandemic sent the economy into recession, fuelling unemployment and pushing millions of people back into poverty. About 29% of Peru's population struggled with poverty in 2023, up from 20.2% in 2019, according to the country's statistics institute. 

At the same time, rising gold prices have made illegal mining attractive in a poor region. A dredger operating for 24 hours can rake in 100g or $8,000 worth of gold at $80 per single gram, said Herman Ruiz, an official at the National Forestry and Wildlife Service (SERFOR) and head of the Allpahuayo-Mishana National Reserve.

Park rangers and local community patrols have managed to keep mining out of the Allpahuayo-Mishana National Reserve in the lower part of the Nanay River, but satellite images sourced by NGO Amazon Conservación show dozens of dredgers higher up in the Alto Nanay-Pintuyacu-Chambira protected area.

Indeed, a 2023 report by the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) showed illegal mining was present in 11 of Loreto's largest rivers that year, including Nanay, but the latter had three times the number of dredgers than all other rivers combined.

According to the report, satellite images detected 98 dredgers in the Nanay River in the middle of 2023, having spotted none at the beginning of 2020.

Remote areas

Ruiz said the illegal mining in Loreto is mainly led by criminal groups from Colombia who recruit locals and train them to build simple dredgers from a converted lorry engine and a wooden raft. Some Brazilians and Venezuelans working for criminal organisations are also involved, he said.

A Colombian gang believed to include dissident members of the now-demobilised Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels uses violence to enforce its rule in remote areas and dominates illegal gold and cocaine trafficking, according to a security official, who asked not be named because of the risk to his safety.

Carlos Castro, the chief environmental prosecutor for Loreto, said it is becoming increasingly difficult for authorities to curb illegal mining activity as it spreads to desolate areas.

He said it can take 12 hours to reach remote outposts by boat and it is even more difficult to reach them by air.

"There is no place to land... because of the curves of this (river) basin," he said.

The fact that the miners now have access to the internet and can warn one another that the police is coming also makes curbing the illegal mining harder, said Ruiz. The miners  installed satellite dishes in the area in recent years, he said.

Meanwhile, it has become increasingly risky to deal with the illegal miners.

Castro said the police and prosecutors are often outnumbered by "hostile villagers" when they reach those areas and that the police has advised prosecutors to take "a certain number of (security) people" when they travel to tackle illegal mining.

"We have been ambushed in the past," he said.

Ruiz said he has even been a victim of indirect death threats.

"Someone would tell me to be careful; that I'm on the gang's blacklist", he said.

Finding poison

Vega took her team to Mishana -- where around 80 people live on fishing, farming and community tourism -- to take hair samples from residents to test for mercury levels. Mishana is located some 40 km southwest of Iquitos.

Betty Amasifuen, 42, is among those who volunteered to be tested even though she lives many miles downstream from the mining activity.

"For us, who live here in this part of the Nanay River and eat the fish, it's not good," said the mother of six.

In the local village hall, Vega told the local population about mercury's devastating heath impact. She referred to the renowned case in Japan in the 1950s, when children in Minamata Bay were born with congenital deformities and neurological disabilities because of mercury contamination.

"We do not want to be the people or communities contaminated or getting some kind of disease," said 63-year old Fidencio Zuta, a local resident.

The World Health Organisation classifies mercury as one of the 10 chemicals of major public concern.

Given illegal mining in Loreto is fairly recent, there are no comprehensive studies on its health impact on the local population yet. But on the other side of Peru's Amazon, where mining has been taking place for decades, a study found the majority of adults were affected.

The comprehensive 2009 study from the Carnegie Amazon Mercury Ecosystem Project showed 78% of adults in Madre de Dios, Peru's most heavily-mined Amazon region, had mercury levels in their hair above the WHO's recommended concentration limit of 1ppm, one part per million.    

Vega said children were particularly vulnerable.

"When they are exposed when their mother is pregnant, it can harm the way that they learn, they think, their memory," she said. "It's affecting how these kids could learn or be productive. So, you're affecting the kid for their whole life."

(Reporting by Dan Collyns; Editing by Jack Graham and Ana Nicolaci da Costa.)