Amazon Gold Mining Video: Carnegie Airborne Observatory Reveals Deforestation, Devastation

“Deforestation isn’t a strong enough term to describe what’s happening there," Peruvian journalist and politician Guido Lombardi told Amazon Aid Foundation. "It’s truly devastation. It’s as if you put a piece of desert in the middle of the Amazonian rain forest."
And, like the moonscapes they resemble, the gashes of heavy mining have left the land contaminated and incapable of growing new vegetation, Lombardi noted.
And that's just the picture from above. On the ground, the situation is even more dire.
Greg Asner, whose team comprises Peruvians, Americans and Canadians, describes the classic horrors of gold fever -- "a whole awful heartbreaking cycle" that includes the brutal dealings of 'gold lords', prostitution and child abuse.
And then there's mercury -- the highly toxic element miners use to separate gold from the soil.
The drive to plunder the Amazon, which covers about 4.1 million square kilometers of South America, is sowing a lethal legacy in its wake.
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