How illegal mining is spreading across Ecuador

Several studies and government inspections show that illegal mining is spreading across Ecuador, especially in the country's Amazon region.

In the tributaries of the Punino River, located between the Amazon provinces of Napo and Orellana, illegal mining increased by 578% last year, according to a study released by the Monitoring of the Amazon Andean Project (MAAP).

In the last three years, deforestation due to illegal mining in the area has reached 217ha, according to the study, which was produced by Washington-based non-profit Amazon Conservation and Ecuador’s Ecociencia, with support from the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad).

"In recent years, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an accelerated increase in illegal mining," Jorge Villa, a specialist in geographic information systems and remote sensing at Ecociencia, told BNamericas. "In the case of the northern and central Amazon, in the area of Napo, Orellana and Punino, we have especially seen how alluvial gold mining has expanded at a strong pace.”

Using satellite images, the organizations denounced last month that from August 2019-October 2022 around 25ha were affected by the felling of trees and removal of sediments due to illegal gold mining in the Podocarpus national park, which is a protected area in the southeast.

Environmental groups from Napo also denounced last month the presence of 60 backhoes on the banks of the Jatunyacu River, in front of the town of Yutzupino, where the government evicted 700 illegal miners in February last year.

Data from President Guillermo Lasso's administration show that the biggest illegal mining problems are found in the Amazonian provinces of Morona Santiago, Zamora Chinchipe and Sucumbíos; in the coastal provinces of Esmeraldas and El Oro; and the southern provinces of Loja and Azuay.

The government declared illegal mining a threat to national security in January and said it would throw its full support behind legal mining concessions. The decision was adopted after identifying that it has direct links to other crimes such as money laundering, drug trafficking and arms trafficking, according to security secretary Diego Ordóñez.

Illegal mining has been a problem in Ecuador for years, but it has recently become an alarming issue, former deputy mining minister Fernando Benalcázar told BNamericas.

Weak institutions in terms of supervision and corruption have created a "perfect breeding ground" for the illegal activity to flourish, he said.

In 2019, an operation involving more than 2,500 soldiers and police officers evicted some 10,000 illegal gold miners who had taken over the La Joroba mountain, in the country's north.

According to Benalcázar, so far none of these miners have been sentenced and sent to prison.

Photo: Seizure in an operation to crack down on illegal mining in the town of Buenos Aires, Ecuador.