According to a new study , gold mining razed 650 square miles of tropical forest in South America between 2001 and 2013. That may not sound like a lot—the area is about the size of Hong Kong—but the devastation is far greater than just the loss in forest cover, said Mitchell Aide, a biologist at the University of Puerto Rico and an author of the report.
“The impact of mining in tropical forests is much bigger than that area because sediment and mercury go down the rivers; people come in and settle and need food,” said Aide. “There could easily be lots of hunting going on in the intact forests. So the footprint of gold mining is much bigger.”
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