(16 May 2019) LEAD IN:
For a decade, a gold rush accelerated in Peru's Tambopata province, a center for an illicit activity that is among the most lucrative, and destructive, in the Amazonian wilderness.
Security forces came and went; miners scattered and returned. Then Peru announced something different: It has installed permanent military bases in hopes of curbing not just illegal mining but also human trafficking and other associated crimes.
STORY-LINE:
By day, Peruvian police and soldiers search for and destroy equipment used by illegal gold miners in a part of the Amazon rainforest where mining has transformed once-dense foliage into a desert with dead trees and toxic pools.
For a decade, a gold rush accelerated in Peru's Tambopata province, a center for an illicit activity that is among the most lucrative, and destructive, in the Amazonian wilderness.
Security forces came and went; miners scattered and returned.
Then Peru announced something different: It installed permanent military bases in hopes of curbing not just illegal mining but also human trafficking and other associated crimes.
"Operation Mercury" began in February when authorities evicted thousands of illegal gold miners from the area and deployed hundreds of police and soldiers for the long term, lodging them in some cases in the same makeshift quarters once used by gold dealers.
In March, the Associated Press observed "Operation Mercury" from the skies, using a camera-mounted drone.
The men in uniform regularly patrol in vehicles and on motorcycles, though some miners emerge at night and there are concerns that others will wait for the military presence to subside, or simply relocate elsewhere.
What is certain is the devastation left behind - partly because of the mercury used to separate gold from debris during excavation. Tens of thousands of acres (hectares) of rainforest have been destroyed.
The area known as "La Pampa," which surrounds a national park and doesn't appear on state maps, has yielded roughly 25 tons of illegally mined gold a year, much more than the output of Yanacocha, Peru's most productive legal gold mine, according to the Peruvian government.
Peru is the No. 1 producer of gold in Latin America.
It is a pattern being repeated to varying degrees elsewhere in the Amazon, including in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia and Brazil.
Fueled by rising global prices, illegal gold mining destroyed 92,000 square miles (238,000 square kilometers) of forest between 2000 and 2015, according to the Amazonian Network of Geo Referenced Socio-Environmental Information, a coalition of non-government groups that analyzed data from the Amazon in nine countries.
The use of hundreds of tons of toxic mercury in illegal mining across the continent has raised concerns about health problems on affected land, some of which is occupied by indigenous people.
One base occupied by security forces in La Pampa is surrounded by two lakes contaminated with mercury, as well as debris left by miners.
The police and soldiers occasionally find machinery used by the illegal miners and blow it up with dynamite. They also destroy metal tubing used to mine gold.
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