<
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/amazon-rainforest-gold-mining-is-poisoning-scores-threatened-species-2023-08-05/>
"LOS AMIGOS BIOLOGICAL STATION, Peru, Aug 5 (Reuters) - In a camping tent in
the Peruvian jungle, four scientists crowded around a tiny patient: An
Amazonian rodent that could fit in the palm of a human hand.
The researchers placed the small-eared pygmy rice rat into a plastic chamber
and piped in anesthetic gas until it rolled over, asleep. Removing the creature
from the chamber, they fitted it with a miniature anesthetic mask and measured
its body parts with a ruler before gently pulling hairs from its back with
tweezers.
The hairs, bundled into a tiny plastic bag, would be carried to a nearby lab at
the Los Amigos Biological Station for testing to determine whether the rat is
yet another victim of mercury contamination.
Los Amigos lies in the rainforest of southeastern Peru's Madre de Dios region
where some 46,000 miners are searching for gold along river banks in the
country's epicenter of small-scale mining.
Tests like this are providing the first extensive indications that mercury from
illegal and poorly regulated mining is affecting terrestrial mammals in the
Amazon rainforest, according to preliminary findings from a world-first study
shared with
Reuters.
Absorbing or ingesting mercury-contaminated water or food has been found to
cause neurological illness, immune diseases and reproductive failure in humans
and some birds.
But scientists don't yet know its full effects on other forest animals in the
Amazon, where more than 10,000 species of plants and animals are at a high risk
of extinction due to destruction of the rainforest."
Via Frederick Wilson II.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
