Gold mining in Venezuela represents a danger to the Amazon

The dictator Nicolás Maduro has motivated his inhabitants to extract gold without any kind of environmental consideration. As a result of the fires caused in the Amazon, studies began to be carried out on other problems that affect the region, and it was discovered that Venezuelans are clearing the forests in order to extract gold.

The Orinoco Mining Arc was in charge of motivating the extraction of gold. In these areas, guerrilla groups and the Maduro regime are present, with the intention of extracting as much gold as possible to sell these minerals to foreign companies.

Only 15% of those who perform the extraction do so in a Legal manner. 85% do it in an insecure and destructive way, but in the same way, this does not interest the Venezuelan regime, which limits itself to buying gold in the same way.

Although there is no exaggerated cutting down of trees, the forests begin to get sick as the chemicals used to clean the gold fall into the hydrographic basins of the jungle. This begins to deteriorate all the trees in its path, which causes other animals to be poisoned and when the trees die, the rivers dry up.

The last count carried out by the Amazonian Network of Georeferenced Socio-environmental Information (Raisg), showed that there are approximately 1800 points of mining extraction, which means 1800 points of contamination. Which is increasing at high scales due to the Venezuelan crisis.

While in other countries this activity begins to be controlled and legally punished, in Venezuela this does not happen. The government simply allows people to extract as much gold as possible, in order to feed the coffers of the Central Bank of Venezuela, which is losing more and more resources due to international blockades.