SÃO PAULO — After years of delays in protecting the Munduruku Indigenous people from illegal gold mining and mercury use decimating the Tapajós River Basin, Brazil’s independent public prosecutors said there’s now a planned start date to remove the miners from the Munduruku Indigenous territory. Though the precise date and operation remain confidential, stakeholders in the government and communities are gathering preliminary data to plan the miners’ expulsion, sources share with Mongabay. The Munduruku and their ancestral lands in the Amazon rainforest have dealt with illegal gold miners for decades. When miners use mercury to obtain gold from the ore, the toxin flows down the river, affecting communities that drink the water and consume its fish. From babies to the elderly, studies have detected the presence of this heavy metal in their bodies. Mercury impacts the central nervous system, causing brain damage and deformities and crossing the placental barrier to reach the fetus. The Munduruku Indigenous territory was officially recognized two decades ago, but miners still came. Despite a 2020 Supreme Federal Court order for the federal government to expel miners in Munduruku and other Indigenous lands “in a more critical state” (with a request made again in 2023), very little has been done so far. In addition to the STF, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Pará Public Prosecutor’s Office have requested the removal of the illegal miners from the Munduruku land for years. The land, measuring 2.4 million hectares (5.9 million acres), is the second-largest area of…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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