蜜芽传媒

Illegal mining is one of the reasons why so much of the Amazon rainforest has been cut down and why what was a pristine environment has been so degraded.聽 And it's still going on - several hundred illegal miners have gathered on the Madeira River in the Brazilian Amazon after reports that gold had been found there.聽

So many that it's prompted the government to deploy the navy and federal police to the area.聽The 蜜芽传媒's James Menendez has been talking to Cesar Diniz who focuses on mining for the MapBiomas network in Brazil that tracks changes in land use.

"We are talking about an orchestrated consortium activity that is joining together hundreds of floating boats and creating clusters of gold extraction on the Madeira riverbed. That's something weird that we haven't observed since we started mapping the Brazilian territory from space three decades ago. So this is something new."

Photo shows: Gold rush draws hundreds of dredging rafts on the Madeira River in Autazes. Credit: Reuters