Word travels fast in gold country. Every fluctuation in the price of the precious metal sends new waves of prospectors streaming to the hinterland, especially the states that make up the so-called Legal Amazon in Brazil. In recent years, tens of thousands of gold miners have diffused across the Brazilian Amazon (20,000 of them in Yanomami territory alone), many using mercury to extract the precious metal, spewing the toxic substance into rivers in the process. Artisanal gold mines (garimpos) expanded at three times the rate of industrial mines from 2010 to 2020, overtaking the land area for corporate prospecting in the Amazon.
read more... https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/2023-05-09/opinion-the-global-gold-rush-imperils-the-brazilian-amazon
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