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An illegal gold rush has wiped out 140,000 hectares of rainforest in the Amazon region of Peru, accelerating as foreign, armed groups enter the region to profit from record gold prices, as per a recent study.

Roughly 540 square miles of territory have been converted for extraction activities in the Peruvian nation since 1984, and the environmental destruction is growing at an alarming rate across the country, investigations revealed.

This mining boom is also poisoning its rivers and streams. Illegal miners use dredges – equipment that disrupt and displace riverbeds – depositing toxic mercury employed to separate gold from sediment in their path.

Detailed satellite photographs enabled analysts to detect mining equipment together with deforestation for the first time, showing that the environmental crisis once confined to the southern part of the country was creeping north.

“We used to only see it in the Madre de Dios region but now we’re seeing it everywhere,” stated an official involved in the research.

Gold values surpassed four thousand dollars for the initial occasion this week on international markets as worldwide concerns increased about financial fragility. Indigenous groups have raised concerns that as the value climbs, armed groups were more frequently destroying their forests and poisoning their water sources in search for the valuable mineral.

Aerial images show that once dense swathes of green jungle are being converted into barren landscapes of barren soil marked by stagnant pools of discolored water.

“This small section is just a minor example,” a researcher noted, pointing to a limited area of the vast red patchwork of forest clearance mapped in the report. “Imagine this multiplied to one hundred forty thousand hectares.”

Mercury contamination build up in aquatic life and pass to the populations who eat them, causing neurological and developmental problems such as congenital disorders and learning difficulties.

An ongoing investigation of communities along riverbanks in Peru’s far north of the Loreto region found the median level of mercury was almost quadruple the safe threshold set by global health authorities.

Research found that hundreds of waterways have been affected, with 989 dredges spotted in Loreto since recent years – including two hundred seventy-five this year alone on the Nanay River, a branch of the Amazon River that is the vital source of natural habitats and dozens of Indigenous communities.

“They are poisoning our rivers – it’s the drinking water that we drink,” said a representative of several riverside communities in the area.

Residents began preventing extractors from advancing up the River Tigre in Loreto 40 days ago, resulting in gunfights with armed intruders. “We have no choice but to fight back but we are unsupported. The state is absent,” he expressed with anger.

Mining remains concentrated in the southern area of Madre de Dios in southern Peru but new hotspots are developing in northern regions in multiple provinces.

They are small but once mining is established it could expand quickly, an expert said, stating that the report was a insight into what was happening across the broader Amazon region.

“It marks the initial occasion we’ve been able to examine so closely at a nation but I think in neighboring countries we are going to see similar patterns,” he commented.

Research showed additional mining equipment being detected on Peru’s jungle frontiers with Bolivia, Brazil and Colombia.

With gold prices surpassing $4,000 an ounce, international armed factions are increasingly venturing across the border into Peru’s lawless jungles where local authorities are doing little to stop them, as stated by a criminologist.

Illegal organizations, such as factions from Colombia and Brazil, are more involved in the region.

“Global criminal syndicates trafficking cocaine and concealing illicit gains through illegal gold mining – amid record values yielding high profits – are combined with a administration that has failed to act decisively against organised crime,” the expert remarked.

A political coalition of South American countries told Peru to get serious about unlawful extraction or it could face economic sanctions.

But a researcher said: “Gold is just so profitable right now. There are no indications of prices going down, so it’s likely going to get worse before it improves.”