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Rainforest Deforestation Caused by Mining

Home to about half the world's plant and animal species, the rainforests are under constant threat from human development and pollution. One particularly dangerous threat to rainforests is mining. While some countries in the region have instituted regulations to control the damage, the lure of mineral wealth ensures that mining is likely to remain a threat for the foreseeable future.

Mineral Resources
- The Amazon region is home to a large number of mineral deposits containing valuable resources. Carajas Province in Brazil is home to what may be the largest copper reserve in the world, and iron ore, manganese, nickel, tin and bauxite are present throughout the region, according to the World Wildlife Fund. The Peruvian portion of the rainforest is home to vast gold and silver reserves, and exploitation of these resources has increased as prices have climbed in the international commodities market, according to Smithsonian Magazine. The Amazon Aid Foundation indicates more than 15,000 acres of rainforest are lost to mining every year.
Mining operations
- Mining operations in the Amazon typically fall into two categories. Strip mining removes layers of earth one by one to get at buried mineral deposits, destroying large areas of topsoil and vegetation. Much of the gold mining in the region focuses on deposits in and around the rivers, and these miners typically cut down forests on flood plains and blast riverbanks with high-pressure water in order to get at the mineral deposits near the surface. Any region targeted by either type of mining operation will see its ecosystem changed irrevocably by the damage.
Refining and Pollution
- Another way in which mining damages the rainforest is on-site refining. One way to collect and concentrate gold is by using mercury or cyanide to amalgamate the mineral and separate it from other deposits. While refiners can reclaim these materials by carefully melting the amalgamate and separating it back out, often times they simply burn it away or dump the excess into local waterways. Small-scale mining operations may release nearly three pounds of mercury for every 2.2 pounds of gold produced, according to Mongabay.com, and this can have devastating effects on plant and animal life. Cyanide, a highly toxic chemical, is often used to separate mined gold. Mongabay.com reveals that a mine accident in Guyana in 1995 released more than a billion gallons of the cyanide into the environment, contaminating drinking water and killing aquatic and terrestrial life in the region.
Regulation and Protection
- In an effort to mitigate the damage to the rainforest, many countries have implemented strict permitting processes that miners must undergo to gain permission to exploit mineral resources. Unfortunately, lucrative rewards and loopholes in the laws have led many operations to skirt these laws, and governments find it difficult to monitor the many small-scale operations setting up shop in the Amazon. Peru estimates between 90 and 98 percent of its rainforest gold mining operations are actually illegal, with as many as 30,000 unlicensed gold miners working in the region, according to Smithsonian Magazine.

Nature