In French Guiana, the impact of gold trafficking on the environment is so disastrous that the army has to intervene. Brut Nature followed soldiers on the ground.
Episode 2 of our series of stories on the impact of gold in Guiana.
Episode 2 of our series of stories on the impact of gold in Guiana.
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TravelTranscript
00:00We are here on a reconstruction of an illegal mulching site.
00:17This site is representative of what we find today in the Guyanese forest.
00:23It is really a site of reconstruction that allows you to train in the techniques of fighting against illegal mulching.
00:30We have a water extraction from the river, from the creek, and here by means of a kind of large fire lance, a monitor lance,
00:54the illegal mulchers come to work the alluvions to extract a mud behind it, which itself is chained to the lifting table.
01:03The water flows on the different boards, on these boards are positioned lifting mats, and by gravity, the mud, which is heavier than the mud, freezes at the bottom of the lifting mats.
01:15So from that moment on, these muds will be used as mercury to be able to extract mud by an amalgam.
01:21The real problem with the alluvion sites is the rejection of these muds, which have been treated from mercury and gasoil and which are rejected directly into the rivers,
01:31thus generating water pollution, but also vegetation and the different animals that live there.
01:39Concretely, today there is a cartography of the sites referenced by the Observatory of Mineral Activity on the Guyanese territory.
01:57The sites are clearly identified, the detachments are prepared and then they are projected either by pirogue and on foot or by helicopter, by helicopter operation,
02:08in the heart of the forest, in order to seize and destroy these sites.
02:12Here we are on the living area, the area of the carbae, which allows illegal outliers to reside near the extraction sites.
02:32The size of the camps is variable, it can be of the order of a few people to several hundred.
02:39This depends on the extraction site and therefore on the amount of gold that can be extracted within this site.
02:45When we arrive on a site, our goal is to deploy very quickly in order to freeze the situation.
02:53Our goal is to seize the materials that are expensive to illegal outliers, a quad like this one, which costs more than 10,000 euros,
03:02but also the concussors, the motor pumps, the electrogen groups, gold, mercury and also the pirogues.
03:09This is what will cost the most to illegal outliers and this is what will allow us to be sure to be able to limit this illegal outlying in Guyana.
03:24Between January 1, 2018 and November 30, the value of the seizure and destruction by the internal security forces and the armed forces in Guyana rises to about 25 million euros.
03:37But despite the destruction of major materials, but also of the carbae, illegal outliers return to the sites, re-arrange these sites,
03:46and generally these are the sites that are the most productive and therefore the most profitable.
03:53Thank you for watching!