A comprehensive satellite survey shows river mining has surged over the past 20 years, and today affects over 170 large rivers—with almost 7% of all large tropical river stretches cloudy with mining debris.
at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union, shows levels of suspended sediment have doubled, compared with premining levels, in some 80% of the rivers. In total, almost 7% of all large tropical river stretches are now cloudy with mining debris. “It’s completely flown under the radar,” says Miles Silman, a forest ecologist at Wake Forest University and coauthor of the study. “The pervasiveness was really shocking to me. It’s just nuts.
pushed mining out of protected regions, the work has simply moved to other parts of the watershed, says Enrique Ortiz, a tropical ecologist at the Andes Amazon Fund. “In the general picture, it has gotten worse by the day.” The work “is incredibly powerful and something the community has needed for a while,” says Jackie Gerson, a biogeochemist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who has studied mercury pollution from mining in Peru and Senegal. Although environmentalists and activists have drawn attention to individual watersheds, the study shows how river mining is a global issue, in need of more attention and action, she says.
Gold mining is now the world’s top source of mercury pollution, emitting more than coal-fired power stations. A 2022 study led by Gersonin Madre de Dios contained mercury at levels resembling contaminated industrial regions in China. What all this mercury pollution is doing to residents, including nearby Indigenous tribes, is far less clear, Ortiz says. “We know more about the impact of mercury on wildlife than people.
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