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An illegal gold rush has wiped out 140,000 hectares of rainforest in the Peruvian Amazon, intensifying as foreign, armed groups enter the area to profit from all-time high gold values, as per a recent study.

Approximately 540 square miles of territory have been cleared for mining in the South American country since the mid-1980s, and the environmental destruction is growing at an alarming rate across the country, investigations discovered.

The gold rush is also contaminating its rivers and streams. Unlawful extractors use dredges – equipment that disrupt and displace river bottoms – leaving harmful mercury used to extract gold from sediment in their path.

Detailed satellite photographs enabled analysts to detect mining equipment alongside deforestation for the first time, showing that the environmental crisis previously limited to the southern part of the country was spreading northward.

“Initially, it was only observed in Madre de Dios but now we’re seeing it everywhere,” stated an official from the monitoring project.

Gold values topped $4,000 for the first time this period on global exchanges as worldwide concerns rose about financial fragility. Native communities have raised concerns that as the price soars, militant factions were increasingly tearing down their woodlands and poisoning their rivers in pursuit of the valuable mineral.

Satellite photos show that previously lush forest areas are being converted into barren landscapes of grey earth pocked with stagnant pools of discolored water.

“This little square is just a minor example,” a researcher noted, indicating a small section of the extensive pattern of deforestation mapped in the report. “Consider this expanded to one hundred forty thousand hectares.”

The mercury residues build up in aquatic life and pass to the people who consume them, leading to health and cognitive issues such as birth defects and developmental delays.

An ongoing study of communities along riverbanks in Peru’s northernmost region of the Loreto region found the median level of mercury was almost quadruple the World Health Organization’s recommended limit.

Analysis found that 225 rivers and streams have been impacted, with nearly a thousand dredging machines spotted in the region since 2017 – including two hundred seventy-five in the current year on the Nanay River, a branch of the Amazon that is the vital source of ecosystems and dozens of Indigenous communities.

“They are poisoning our rivers – it’s the water that we drink,” said a representative of multiple local communities in Loreto.

Residents began preventing extractors from advancing up the River Tigre in the region recently, leading to armed clashes with militant groups. “We have no choice but to fight back but we are unsupported. Government authorities is nowhere to be seen,” he expressed frustrated.

Extraction activities is mostly located in the Madre de Dios region in southern Peru but new hotspots are appearing in northern regions in Loreto, Amazonas, Huánuco, Pasco and Ucayali.

These areas are limited but once mining is established it could grow rapidly, a researcher said, stating that the report was a glimpse into what was occurring across the broader Amazon region.

“It marks the initial occasion we’ve been able to look in this detail at a nation but I think in Brazil, Bolivia and Colombia we are going to see similar patterns,” he added.

Findings showed more dredges being detected on Peru’s jungle frontiers with Bolivia, Brazil and Colombia.

As gold values exceed four thousand dollars per ounce, international armed factions are increasingly venturing into Peruvian territory into unregulated forest areas where government officials are doing little to stop them, according to a criminologist.

Criminal networks, such as factions from neighboring countries, are more involved across the border.

“International crime networks involved in drug trade and concealing illicit gains through unlawful extraction – now with peak prices providing hefty returns – are combined with a administration that has failed to act decisively against criminal enterprises,” the expert remarked.

An intergovernmental group of South American countries told Peru to get serious about unlawful extraction or it could face economic sanctions.

But an expert said: “Gold is just so profitable at present. There are no indications of prices going down, so it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better.”