A captivating view of the Peruvian Amazon from space has become a striking reminder of the desolation caused by the region’s gold mining.
The breathtaking photo, taken by a NASA astronaut on board the International Space Station, shows two parallel but very different rivers – one natural and one man-made – winding through what was once a thriving rainforest. Now, however, rampant illegal mining has taken over much of the South American nation’s gold reserves and destroyed more than 250,000 acres of forest, according to environmental reports.
The left side of the photo shows the spindly Inambari River, but it’s the scene on the right that catches the eye with a meandering canal lit by miles of gold mining pits.
The rare photo required cloudless weather conditions and for the sun to drop its light at a very specific angle called the “shimmer point” to create the dazzling effect.
The independent miners shouted garimperos, are responsible for the luminous belt through the iconic Amazon rainforest. In search of a better life, they descended to Madre de Dios in Peru, where a gold rush has been rampant since the 1980s, prompted by a rise in the price of the precious metal. The country is the sixth largest producer of gold in the world. In 2017, a study estimated that about 155 tons were removed from the Peruvian Amazon.
Their zealous pursuit of wealth has left a graveyard filled with wildlife and tropical vegetation, and soil contaminated with mercury – a byproduct of the gold mining process. The silt was so rich that it was possible to forge as much as 10 to 15 grams of gold per day. According to Nasdaq, gold costs just over $ 1,800 an ounce, or about $ 64.50 per gram.
For years, lawless La Pampa, a center of the hostile illegal mining industry, was known for supporting “prostitution, modern slavery and organized crime,” and had long been largely inaccessible to outsiders, according to a 2020 report in Nature. Scientists and land authorities could only watch from the distance of a satellite as vast tracts of rainforest were mowed to search the surface.
In 2019, the Peruvian government declared martial law in the region, expelling tens of thousands of miners who relied on that work to make a living. Since then, conservation biologists have partnered with Peru to investigate which tree species can survive the now harsh ecosystem.