Peruvian Government Cracks Down On Illegal Miners

Using the fragile Amazonian ecosystem as its rationale, the Peruvian government has cracked down on outlaw miners along a 300-kilometer stretch of the Inambari River in the Puerto Maldonado region.

Nearly 1,000 military troops and police officers, assisted by helicopters and motor boats, took part in the first day of the operation that began on Saturday and is due to last a month.

They seized 13 river dredgers pumping silt up from the riverbed and sunk, burnt or otherwise destroyed seven, the defense ministry said Sunday.

"These are no small cottage industries," Defense Minister Jaime Thorne said, pointing to destroyed Chinese-made dredgers that cost about $250,000 each.

The operation aims to track down and destroy some 300 large pieces of mining equipment, including 200 dredgers, along 300 kilometers (190 miles) of the Inambari River in the southeastern Puerto Maldonado region.

The Peruvian Minister of the Environment said that doing so would avert a potential ecological disaster.


It may be callous of me to point this out, but the crackdown will also make way for mining companies to lift out the gold. Needless to say, those companies will be held to safety and cleanup standards that the illegal miners ignore.