Gold price surges, threatening the Amazon with more illegal & unsustainable mining

Global economic uncertainty, driven largely by the trade conflict and tariffs pushed by the U.S. president over the past several months, has driven the price of gold to more than $3,100 per ounce, the highest it's been since 1986. Gold is typically viewed as a safe investment by both private investors and central banks, especially in times of crisis, and when the commodity's demand increases, its price increases apace. This is bad news for the Amazon, a major source of the world's gold supply. The problem is that, per unit area, there is actually not that much of the precious metal here; to get at it, miners turn over massive amounts of alluvial sediments, destroying large areas of pristine rainforest in the process. The damage is essentially permanent – what's left behind after most mining operations in the Amazon is a barren landscape that may never recover. To make matters worse, most small-scale mining operations use mercury to bind tiny gold particles for extraction, leading to an acute public health crisis across huge swaths of the region. This ongoing story highlights the interconnectedness of global events and the conservation of the Amazon, including here in souhteastern Peru, which is heavily impacted by widespread small-scale gold mining.

Read Reuter's coverage of the spike in gold prices here, or Mongabay's coverage of one of many victims here