Case Studies

This work grew out of a series of collaborations with journalists and with activists seeking to expose illegal gold-mining activity and document its impacts on the environment and on nearby communities.

A full archive is on Github.

Selected reporting

• The series Corredor Furtivo investigates dissident guerilla elements driving gold mining operations in Venezuela and resistance from indigenous communities along the Colombian border. From Armando.Info and El País, produced in conjunction with the Pulitzer Center's Rainforest Investigation Network.

• "As pistas da destruição" reports on illicit airfields and the pilots supplying Brazilian gold fields and trafficking out gold. From The Intercept, with a companion piece in The New York Times.

• "The pollution of illegal gold mining in the Tapajós River" reveals explosive growth of mining in the Tapajós river basin, from InfoAmazonia.

• "Suspected leader of the so called narcogarimpos extracted gold from environmental area without the permission of Brazilian regulation authority" follows the Narcogarimpos investigation from Repórter Brasil.

If you are a journalist and want to investigate some of the areas of mining identified by this tool, we recommend you check on the geographical coordinates of the mines as provided in our interactive map. The location data will help you to cross-reference the information with other databases, such as deforestation or mining concessions. By correlating these datasets, you might be able to find the corporate actors responsible for the mining sites and determine the legality of the operations.