Hundreds of dredging rafts operated by miners embark on a gold rush on the Madeira River, an important tributary of the Amazon, sailing for several kilometers as state and federal authorities discuss who is responsible for preventing the illegal action.
The ferries equipped with water pumps are tied together in rows that cross almost the entire wide Madeira River. A Reuters witness saw exhaust fumes indicating that they were vacuuming gold from the riverbed.
“We count no less than 300 ferries. They have been there for at least two weeks and the government hasn’t done anything,” said Greenpeace Brazil activist Danicley Aguiar.
The gold rush began as world leaders gathered for COP26, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, in Glasgow, UK.
During the event and in recent years, the government has complained that the international views critical of environmental policies under Jair Bolsonaro (non-party) are not fair.
In the Bolsonaro government, however, deforestation levels exploded and are continuing to grow in the Amazon. The most recent data from Prodes, an Inpe (National Institute for Space Research) system that measures deforestation annually, destruction grew 22% from 2020 to 2021, reaching 13,235 km2, highest value since 2006.
Bolsonaro himself has even disallowed inspection actions that were in progress.
The Madeira River travels about 3,300 km from its source in Bolivia through the forest in Brazil to empty into the Amazon River.
The dredging rafts sailed downstream from the Humaitá area, where there was an increase in illegal gold mining, and were last seen some 650 kilometers away in Autazes, a municipality southeast of Manaus.
A spokeswoman for the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama) said that illegal dredging in the Madeira River is not the responsibility of the federal government, but of the State of Amazonas and the Amazonas Environmental Protection Institute (Ipaam).
The head of Ipaam, Juliano Valente, said that his agency instructed the state security forces to act, but insisted that the river falls under federal jurisdiction and that inspection is the responsibility of the Federal Police and the National Mining Agency (ANM).
The Federal Police and the ANM did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“It’s a free-for-all. No authority is doing anything to prevent illegal mining, which has become an epidemic in the Amazon,” said Aguiar.
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