Into the rainforests of peru. These illegal Mining Operations extend for miles and miles away from the main highway. To uncover a gold rush thats turning lush jungle into utter devastation. High preessure water hoses and blasted out. And its not just the land. People are stepping into mercury. Im philtorres im an entomologist ive conducted Extensive Research in this rain forest so this story is personal. It really pains me to see this. Marita davidison is a biologist specilaizing in ecologyand evolution now she shows us the high tech tools that are exposing what even the eye cant see. So where its blood red thats where the mercury polution is most intense. Well share our findings with Lindsay Moran shes an ex cia anaylist. Thats our team, everything weve been seeing. Its for this. Now lets do some science. Hey guys welcome to techknow im phil torres joined by Lindsay Moran and Marita Davidson. This upcoming episode is an important one to me it takes place in peru where ive done alot of my research and it is a tale of contrast we will see a rainforest full of new species and then we will see the devastation that humans have done to extract gold. And as we know with devastating stories like this, where there is a lot of damage science can play a role here not just in monitoring and discovering whats going on but in trying to help process. I think this is a story having looked at some of the images that one image of the devastation pretty much says it all. Absolutely, this is an important story its one that is very near and dear to my heart and it starts in the peruvian rainforest. The amazon rainforest for more than 50 million years its been a cradle of life. This is what pristine rainforest looks like. Lush, untamed, bursting with wildlife. But maybe not for long. Because the soil underneath is laced with gold. And the human desire for it can turn all of this. Into a toxic wasteland like this. This is la pampa in the buffer zone of the Tambopata National reserve. Its part of more than a hundred thousand acres of rainforest in peru that have been decimatd by an illegal gold rush. To investigate techknow traveled deep into peru to a region called Madre De Dios the mother of god. Its one of the most biodiverse areas on the planet and the source of 70 of the illicit gold produced each year in peru. So were on our flight into the area of peru where goldmining is taking stronghold. If you look out the window you can actually already see signs of the damage. We arrived at Puerto Maldonado the regions capitol and a gold mining boom town. An estimated 30 thousand illegal miners work in Madre De Dios. Chances are you might find some of them here to sell gold or buy equipment. I stopped into one of the shops to look around. Its a place called amazon gold and when you walk in, theres a sign compro ro i buy gold. As i exchanged my money there was a little scale right in front of me that had some gold dust on it from past exchanges. But the sign was removed as soon as our camera was spotted. Puerton maldonado is also a place in transition while many of its roads are still dirt paths the new interoceanic highway has opened the area up to the wider world. People come from all over the country to work the gold fields here in Madre De Dios. Luis fernandez directs the carnegie amazon mercury ecosystem project. Hes been studying gold minings toxic legacy in the amazon since 2000. So now miners have better access to the remote forest, they can get their equipment there, everythings easier because of that highway. Everythings easier its essentially part of the perfect storm that is Madre De Dios. So not only do you have a brand new highway that makes transport easier you have record high gold prices and the preexisting condition of extreme poverty. Tell me about this illegal gold mining. What is the process . Were really on the edge between the amazon and the andes, and erosion over millions of years have worn down the rocks of the andes which are gold rich, and all that sediment has washed down the rivers. Next stop a mining area near la pampa. But that can be dangerous for an outsider. The only way into this spot is on the back of a motor bike. The going is tough and wet. And makeshift bridges dont always hold up. These illegal Mining Operations extend for miles and miles away from the main highway. Weve already been on the bikes for half an hour and still got some ways to go. As we get closer trees give way to something hard to grasp impossible to put into words. So where we are should be rainforest. Weve got the rain but the forest is missing. Having done so much work in the area it pains me to see this. The only way to get a handle on the devastation is how illegal miners work. It starts with clearing the trees. The process is one thats very, very primitive. You use High Pressure water hoses and blast it out. The water disolves the soil removing anything in it thats organic. You concentrate it using sluices, which kind of looks like a slide, where you run a slurry of the sediments over carpets which captures the tiny flex of gold that you find in these sediments. The process can turn primary rainforest into this in a matter of days. Sabina valdez is president of a Small Community of miners who work the manuani river nearby. Even she was disturbed by the level of destruction other miners had done to this land. But mining does more than strip a forest bare miners bring in mercury to extract those tiny flecks of gold. Mercury has a very unique characteristic of binding with gold, forming an amalgam. For a miner, its almost like magic. If there was any question as to whether this area was contaminated with mercury the answer is right here. The film amazon gold documented miners working with mercury at a mine deep in the rainforest. People are stepping into mercury . People are stepping into that mix of sediment, mercury and water, and stomping on it like you would grapes. Because you need all those little pieces of gold to touch the mercury to be able to capture it. Manuani miner john valdez works with mercury almost every day. Miners can also be exposed to mercury vapors. Thats because once they extract their amalgam they have to burn off the mercury to get to the gold. So these miners are touching mercury, theyre breathing mercury, what are the Health Effects . So, the type of mercury that these miners are exposed to is extremely toxic, especially when you breathe it. It starts to affect, the liver, kidneys the digestive system and starts to affect the Central Nervous system. Today the manuani miners arent working because of the rain. But john valdez showed me the equipment he used just two days ago to burn mercury off a piece of gold. Everything weve been seeing its for this this is about 3 grams of gold or a hundred dollars, which the average worker can make in about 3 days. Thats a lot of money in Madre De Dios. The average farm worker makes less than 200 a month. That lure of gold, is changing the face of the amazon as jungle is replaced by mining camps like this magnets for crime, under age prostitution and poverty. Symbols of gold at any cost. Coming up on techknow, Marita Davidson meets with a scientist whos hitech plane reveals gold mining the jungle hides. And suddenly we had a problem to report. We wanna hear what you think about these stories, join the conversation by following us on twitter and at aljazeera. Com techknow. Sunday night. 140 World Leaders will take the podium. Get the full story. There is real disunity in the security council. About issues that impact your world. Infectious diseases are a major threat to health. The week ahead. Sunday 8 30 eastern. Only on al jazeera america. In 2013 Haunting Images of the toll illegal mining had taken on the peruvian amazon went viral. The video was taken by the carnegie airborne observatory a high tech plane developed by greg asner from the carnegie Institutions Department of global ecology. What is it about these mining activities that are so destructive from lets say from an environmental perspective first. Gold miners not only remove the forest they go down below the soil surface to what would be called the mineral soil. Below the biologically active part of the soil so deep in the soil that there isnt a science to tell us that those forests could ever recover. The devastation exposed from above was dramatic but it was also only part of the story. The aircraft its outfitted with all sorts of cool technology. How did you use some of that technology to zero in on what was happening in terms of gold mining . One of the key technologies aboard the plane is a Laser Imaging system what it does is we fire laser beams out of the bottom of the plane the lasers can penetrate all the way to the forest floor. So what we end up doing is imaging the forest in very high fidelity 3d. Most of the work that had been done on this gold mining problem was using satellites that see some of the larger mines. We started finding that there was a much larger contribution from thousands of small gold Mining Operations that werent known, and suddenly we had a problem to report. The rate of gold mining expansion tripled after the 2008 global recession. If you are on a typical amazon river the forest seems like its intact all around you. But, this is that same river we were on in the boat. When we peel the forest back we reveal the ground which is shown on the right here and what we see here are gold Mining Operations by and large theyre set back from the rivers edge so they are being executed clandestinely the observatory also has a oneofakind spectrometer which can detect chemicals in the forest below including mercury. Our system is unique that it can measure 420 channels of light, all at the same time from the ultraviolet to the visible part of the spectrum that we see in to the infrared and the shortwave infrared its ability to do that gives us access to key scientific breakthrough, which is the ability to measure chemicals in the environment. Because chemicals shine in different wavelengths of the spectrum. This video from the observatory shows one of the large mining areas in the tambopata buffer zone. Heres how the spectrometer sees that same mining area. So where its blood red, thats where the mercury pollution is most intense, so its basically like a signature contamination severe contamination. And these blue areas are forests that have no mercury in them and these are also illegal mining activities, these large clear activities all of this is illegal. While the spectrometer can see mercury contamination from the sky Luis Fernandez is studying where mercury goes on the ground. Where else does this mercury end up . Because the mercury is being dumped into the rivers and lakes, it then gets into the food chain, bacteria in the water convert the mercury into something even more toxic an organic compound called methylmercury which is easily absorbed in the digestive system. Mercury, unlike many other pollutants, magnifies every time it goes from one link in that food chain to the next. So a fish at the top of the food chain in a contaminated region can have mercury levels millions or tens of millions of times higher than the water in which they swim. Where does that fish end up . In many cases it ends up on the dinner plate of people that live hundreds of miles downstream. Luis fernandez and his team have tested hair samples of more than a thousand people throughout Madre De Dios. More than 75 had levels above the limits considered safe by the Environmental Protection agency some as high as 33 times the limit. But for many miners like john valdez mercury doesnt seem all that dangerous. Over time mercury impacts the Central Nervous system. It can cause problems with vision, hearing and memory at high levels it can cause it can cause brain damage to unborn babies. If you talk to miners, and you say hey. This is a problem, how do they usually respond . Usually they dont believe us. They dont see the immediate effects, because the type of exposure that you see here is a chronic one. Coming up the government cracks down on illegal mining but will it work . By 2012 the price of gold was over 15 hundred dollars an ounce and illegal mining had eaten away more than 100 thousand acres of peruvian rain forest in Madre De Dios alone. The peruvian government decided to get tough. Troops went into mining areas and blew up camps and equipment. The strikes were part of a multipronged strategy according to ernesto raezluna a former adviser to Perus Ministry of the environment. This strategy involved Police Operations and prosecution of the worst offenders and it involved Financial Intelligence to connect the dots and follow the money and see who are the big bosses. The crackdown led to violent clashes between miners and police. It didnt stop illegal mining. They sent in the military thousands of police what impact did that have . Its been a very temporary, fleeting impact. Its so profitable that you can lose half a Million Dollars in machinery and 2 weeks later you are back in business. Its that profitable. The strategy also included a process of legalizing some Mining Operations outside of protected areas. But only if miners can prove they have proper permits and a plan to deal with the environmental impact. It is impossible for many of them and thats the other part. If people are never going to be able to be formal, you better tell them and start dealing with it. Techknow also visited Perus Ministry of the environment in lima. Minister manuel pulgarvidal defended the governments efforts to combat illegal mining so theres this formalization process. How are the miners responding to this . In some way, well. In some other, not so good because sure it is more easy to work outside the rule of law because its more cheap. That is why we need to have very clear ways to enforce the law describe to me the interdictions you crack down in those areas. How was that . How did it go . In some way, good. But on the other hand it is very difficult to maintain that kind of intervention because we cannot do it every day so sometimes we pull out these people from the forbidden zone and in 2 or 3 weeks they are coming back to the same place. Why cant you do it every day, why cant you come back every 3 weeks. Because they are also using some ways to avoid these interdictions measures. For example in the tambopata buffer zone area they are working by night. La pampa is inside the tambopata buffer zone. It has been the target of more than one military interdiction. Yet our cameras caught this Mining Operation in action at la pampa in broad daylight. Many of the regional governments are allies of this illegal mining. There are a lot of corruption, and they are not monitoring or supervising the fulfillment of the law in these areas. We need to show the People Better results. It is not easy. They have miserably failed to put in action even small parts of the integral strategy that the government itself approved. At the moment we have a total abandonment of the initiative i left the ministry over 6 months ago. Why did you leave the ministry . I left the ministry because of a bad turn from government in terms of environmental standards. They approved a new law that weakens the ability of the ministry of the environment to both create protected areas and go after environmental transgressions. I was there to help, not be part of a treason so i left. Techknow also traveled up river into the heart of the Tambopata National reserve. Its a place so protected that we had to register at two control stations on the way. Yet even the park guards seemed overwhelmed. We saw miners working the river just a short distance away from the second control station. Yuri torres was our guide on this journey into the reserve he now makes his living by helping people experience the breathtaking beauty of the rainforest. He knows the forest so well he spots a saddleback tamarin monkey with a baby on its back during our interview but torres used to make his living off the jungle as a gold miner. When i worked as a miner, you dont really care about the forest, honestly. Torres father and his brothers still make their living as illegal gold miners. And do you talk to them about the dangers, about the environment . Yes i do its a big deal. Do you worry about your father and you brothers as miners . Yes i do. I worry about everyone in my family. If they dont mine, what are they doing to do . Its very sad. Sad beyond words. We are talking of some of the most biologically diverse forests on earth. Places where you could spend two full hours watching just whats taking place on one branch of one tree and the way the light of the sun shines on Different Things as time passes by. And in some way you become better because of that im convinced that human beings have a right to nature. It makes us stronger. So phil youve traveled a lot and done a lot of research in that region but this was the first time that you had seen this and been to these areas. How did it affect you emotionally . Ive seen it from the plane, anytime i fly into this area and ive always heard about it but to actually see it first hand was unbelievable. It really made me want to do something and let people know how big of an issue this is. I have to tell you to phil just learning about this strikes a very emotional cord for me too because this is my part of the world. Not peru, but bolivia, and bolivia is part of the equation here. There is a lot of mining activity in bolivia, gold mining as well but the issues that are going on with the magnitude of the illegal activity in peru has been spilling over into bolivia so there is a lot of gold contraband thats going through the bolivian border and getting exported kind of under the radar which is really, really crazy. Its a huge issue on the market. Theres about 3 billion dollars worth of gold going through bolivia. Huge amount. Is this similar to or more complicated than say blood diamonds as a consumer what can i do to make sure i am not contributing to the problem if i wear gold jewelry. The advantage of the diamond problem is just as drastic on the ground but you can actually track a diamond you can figure out based on its chemistry where it came from. With gold, its a lot more difficult to do because a lot of the gold gets exported it gets all melted together so you can have gold from peru mixed with gold from croatia and all of that could make a necklace. Phil, that story really opened my eyes so thank you for that. Yeah, really sobering but important. Be sure to check us out next time on here techknow as we bring you more stories from the field of science. Dive deep into these stories and go behind the scenes at al jazeera. Com techknow follow our expert contributors on twitter, facebook, Instagram Google plus and more. Monday. Visibility was 3 to 5 nautical miles. Weathering the storm. We want to show people how to replace property against the worst Mother Nature has to offer. Experts forecast how to stay safe. Im standing in a tropical windstorm. In extreme weather. Oh my god. Techknows team of experts show you how the miracles of science. This is my selfie, what can you tell me about my future . Can affect and surprise us. Dont try this at home. Techknow where Technology Meets humanity. Monday, 6 30 eastern only on al jazeera america