Illegal Mining Advances Inexorably in the Ecuadorian Amazon, Promoting More Deforestation

Mining in the Ecuadorian Amazon expands and deforests without stopping. Analyses of satellite images of the Amazon Andean Monitoring Project (MAAP) and the Ecociencia Foundation have been showing for several years the increase of this activity in provinces such as Zamora Chinchipe and Morona Santiago, in southern Ecuador. Gold mining (auriferous mining) is one of the main drivers of deforestation throughout the Amazon, with well-known cases in P…