Feb 11, 2021
Rare Nasa photos reveal Amazon 'gold rivers'
NASA. Stunning rare photographs published by Nasa have revealed the extent of gold mining - much of it thought to be illegal - in Peru's Amazon rainforest. The "Rivers of gold" captured in the images are actually pits believed to have been dug by unlicensed miners, the space agency says. The images are further evidence of the scale of destructive gold mining in the Madre de Dios region in south-eastern Peru. The pits where miners are searching for gold appear as hundreds of basins filled with water, surrounded by mud where vegetation has been removed, Nasa explains. In January 2019, a study found that gold mining deforestation destroyed an estimated 22,930 acres of Peru's Amazon in 2018, according to the group Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project.
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