The Ninja Gold Miners of Mongolia

For years, they have furtively worked at abandoned commercial mines and on the edges of active mining sites, sleeping in canvas tents and laboring for 12 hours a day. But the 21st-century gold rush has pushed them into national parks, encroaching on the border with Siberia. Environmentalists say the ninjas are destroying pristine rivers and grasslands with their mining methods, which involve cyanide and mercury. Even the ninjas, many of them out-of-work herders, recognize the damage, but they say there is no other way to earn a livelihood in rural Mongolia. The mining can be dangerous, difficult and cold: at the snow-covered sites where the ninja miners work, temperatures can drop below minus-50. But for the potential of $20 a day, the ninjas have little choice but to pan for gold.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/12/04/magazine/ninja-gold-miners-mongolia.html