Help Protect Earth from Gold Mining
Alluvial gold extraction
is devastating Amazonia
The illegal extraction of alluvial gold involves destructive processes that devastate the Amazonian communities, forests, and ecosystems. Gold jewelry is a keen source of demand for the precious metal.
With rising gold prices climbing, illegal alluvial gold mining expanded into sensitive ecosystems and protected areas on indigenous lands. Crucial biodiversity hotspots in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon and Brazil’s indigenous territories have been stripped of their resources, destroying forests, water, and soil quality, leaving barren landscapes polluted by mercury.
Razing the Amazonian rainforest generates massive greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and destroys the land’s capacity to absorb future GHG emissions.
A massive proposed gold mine endangers Alaska’s pristine wilderness
Pebble Mine, a vast, open-pit copper and gold mine project proposed by a Canadian company, looms over the heart of two of the most critical and pristine salmon-producing rivers in Bristol Bay, Alaska.
Anticipated impacts include destroying nearly 3,500 acres of wetlands, lakes, ponds, and 81 miles of salmon streams. It would jeopardize thousands of American salmon industry jobs, a cultural tradition of subsistence dating back 10,000 years, and a robust sport-fishing and tourism economy. The projected mine facilities entail a mile-long mining trench by a mile wide with a 200-meter depth that would pollute the waters over thousands more acres by fragmenting, dewatering, and covering with mine dust.
Why is gold mining one of the most destructive industries in the world?
Because it displaces communities, contaminates drinking water, hurts workers, and destroys pristine environments. It pollutes water and land with mercury and cyanide, endangering the health of people and ecosystems. Producing gold for a pair of wedding rings, or one ounce, generates a stunning amount of waste and pollution:
