Goldminers Overrun Amazon Indigenous Lands as COVID-19 Surges

[Waking Times]: Thousands of miners in search of gold within Brazil’s Amazon Indigenous Territories (TIs) and Conservation Units (UCs), are illegally clearing forests and polluting rivers at an alarming rate in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic — more than 88,000 Brazilians are dead of the pandemic, with more than 430,000 cases reported in the Amazon as of 28 July.

As the miners wreak havoc on the environment and terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity, they also act as potential vectors for the coronavirus, which has already infected at least 14,647 indigenous people and caused 269 deaths on indigenous lands, according to a report by the Socioenvironmental Institute (ISA), a Brazilian NGO. Some indigenous people have even been pressured, or coerced via death threats, to provide labor to carry out this illegal activity, ISA says....<<<Read The Full Article Here>>>>...