A previous mining camp reveals where shallow mining ponds have actually overwhelmed a previous river system in the La Pampa region of Madre de Dios, Peru. Credit: Photo by Jason Houston (iLCP Redsecker Response Fund/CEES/CINCIA).
Deforestation and water quality enhanced following intervention in the Madre de Dios Region of the Amazon.
Artisanal and small-scale gold mining is a lifeline for many who live in Madre de Dios, a region in southeastern Peru, where hardship is high and jobs are scarce. However, the financial advancement in this part of the Amazon basin comes at an expense, as it causes logging, build-up of sediment in rivers, and mercury contamination in nearby watersheds, threatening public health, Indigenous individuals, and the future of the biodiversity hotspot. And much of the mining activity is unapproved.
Federal Government Intervention: Operation Mercury.
Looking for to eliminate illegal artisanal and small-scale gold mining activity and its many negative effects, the Peruvian government deployed “Operation Mercury” (Operation Mercurio) in February 2019 in the La Pampa region, an area where gold mining is prohibited in many locations. La Pampa straddles the Interoceanic Highway. North of the highway, mining is primarily legal in mining concessions. South of the highway mining is strictly forbidden in the buffer zone of the Tambopata National Reserve.
Through Operation Mercury, armed military and nationwide cops were dispatched to the region and had a sustained presence until March 2020. Miners were evicted and mining equipment was destroyed. The intervention succeeded in stopping prohibited gold mining activity in La Pampa however activity in legal areas increased, triggering many of the exact same ecological issues, according to a Dartmouth-led study. The results were recently released in Conservation Letters, a journal of the Society for Conservation Biology.
Mining devices and shallow mining ponds show where a forest has been desolated in the La Pampa area of Madre de Dios, Peru. Credit: Photo by Jason Houston (iLCP Redsecker Response Fund/CEES/CINCIA).
” Although unlawful gold mining operations in La Pampa concerned a near stop throughout Operation Mercurys 2 intervening years (2019-2020), mining activity basically simply moved throughout the road to legal areas on the other side of the Interoceanic Highway,” states lead author Evan Dethier, an assistant teacher of geology at Occidental College, who carried out the study while he was a postdoctoral fellow at Dartmouth.
Post-Intervention Environmental Changes.
Following Operation Mercury, mining reduced by 70% to 90%. Excavated mining pits (” mining ponds”) in prohibited mining areas decreased by approximately 5% annually as compared to increasing by 33% to 90% per year before the intervention. Although deforested areas experienced revegetation at a rate of 1 to 3 square kilometers each year, progress was balanced out by boosts in logging in legal mining areas north of the Interoceanic Highway at a rate of 3 to 5 square kilometers annually. The majority of the revegetation happened on the edges of deforested locations, with the greatest revegetation in La Pampa south. Mining pond areas outside intervention zones likewise saw boosts ranging from 42% to 83%.
” The spillover impact in areas near the intervention zone shows that more powerful regulations are likewise needed in legal gold mining locations, to help mitigate the ecological results,” says Dethier. “But this intervention did have some of the intended effects, restricting mining in a protected area for a sustained duration.”.
Map showing significant mining locations in Madre de Dios, Peru. Heavily mechanized mining that makes use of earth-moving vehicles predominates in Delta and Huepetuhe, while minimally mechanized mining relying on suction pumps and human labor is used almost specifically in La Pampa.
Research study Methodology.
To assess Operation Mercurys effect on mining activity, the research team drew on satellite data from 2016 to 2021 from the European Space Agencys Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2. Information were acquired from 9 mining locations: 4 prohibited mining areas targeted by the intervention, two legal locations to the north on the other side of the Interoceanic Highway, and three far-off sites that were not part of the enforcement, which functioned as a control for the research study. Utilizing the radar and multispectral data, the researchers had the ability to measure modifications in water, water quality, mining pond areas, and logging in La Pampa following Operation Mercury, by comparing information from previously, throughout, and after the intervention.
As part of the analysis, the group examined the spectral residential or commercial properties of the mining ponds and modifications in pond color. Mining ponds generally take on a yellow color, which serves as a marker for gold mining activity. The “yellowness” of the ponds is connected with increases in suspended sediment in the water, according to prior research study led by Dethier.
Through gold mining procedures, sediment is churned up from the land, creating turbid water with lower reflectance levels, while clearer water has higher reflectance. After Operation Mercury was executed, reflectance increased in mining ponds in La Pampa south but then supported.
Following Operation Mercury, pond yellowness decreased rapidly after mining activity was suspended in all locations of La Pampa, except in the north. In La Pampa northwest, mining activity surged and pond yellowness increased by 43%, as compared to before the intervention. In La Pampa northeast, yellowness stayed steady due to continued mining activity.
Last Thoughts and Broader Implications.
” Like many other countries around the globe with extremely valued natural resources, with Perus abundant deposits of gold, it has had to identify who manages this extractable resource and how this particular mining sector will be formed,” states co-author David A. Lutz, a research study assistant teacher in the Department of Environmental Studies at Dartmouth.
By January 2023, when this paper was under review by the journal, prohibited gold mining had resumed in protected areas, as enforcement and anticorruption activities by the military and nationwide cops had actually ceased, once they were redeployed to concentrate on the COVID-19 pandemic.
” Our outcomes show how intervention at the federal level can effectively stop illegal mining in Peru,” says Dethier. “But that is simply one aspect of the problem, as a diverse approach is required to attend to the long-lasting impacts of both legal and prohibited gold mining activity on humans, wildlife, and the environment in the Madre de Dios watershed.”.
Dethier says that “strong governance and conservation and remediation methods are needed to safeguard this tropical biodiversity hotspot. And, as we continue to reveal in our related work, this obstacle is a global phenomenon.”.
Dethier, Lutz, and others simply published a related study that revealed the rise of similar mining operations in 49 countries across the international tropics. They revealed that as much as 7% of large tropical rivers have actually been deteriorated by these expanding mining operations.
Referral: “Operation mercury: Impacts of national-level armed forces intervention and anticorruption technique on artisanal gold mining and water quality in the Peruvian Amazon” by Evan N. Dethier, Miles R. Silman, Luis E. Fernandez, Jorge Caballero Espejo, Sarra Alqahtani, Paúl Pauca and David A. Lutz, 19 September 2023, Conservation Letters.DOI: 10.1111/ conl.12978.
Looking for to get rid of unlawful artisanal and small gold mining activity and its lots of unfavorable impacts, the Peruvian federal government released “Operation Mercury” (Operation Mercurio) in February 2019 in the La Pampa area, an area where gold mining is prohibited in a lot of locations. Excavated mining pits (” mining ponds”) in prohibited mining locations decreased by up to 5% per year as compared to increasing by 33% to 90% per year before the intervention. Greatly mechanized mining that utilizes earth-moving cars predominates in Delta and Huepetuhe, while minimally mechanized mining relying on suction pumps and human labor is used almost exclusively in La Pampa. Data were obtained from 9 mining locations: four unlawful mining areas targeted by the intervention, two legal areas to the north on the other side of the Interoceanic Highway, and 3 far-off websites that were not part of the enforcement, which served as a control for the study. Mining ponds normally take on a yellow color, which acts as a marker for gold mining activity.
