Expedition

The mines in this area are operating illegally, so we've agreed not to reveal the identity of the workers. A while yeah, hey. (upbeat drum music) We're still not sure how the miners will react to our arrival. (ominous music) So we've just rolled into the mining camp. (vehicle beeping) (ominous music) We need to tread carefully because everyone here is here illegally and what they're doing could get them locked up for a long time. So, I think the first thing to do is just shake some hands, smile, just get a handle on what's going on here. How do? - How are you? How're you going? - Hi, Steve Nice to meet you. So we fight now, big guy? (all laughing) Eh, I'm alright. (laughing) So are you the boss here? Yes, I'm the boss. So what do you do here? We're going some gold mining. Yeah, can you show us the job you do? -

Boss

Yes, we can bring you up to show you how we work. -

Steve

The miners are much more relaxed than we expect. We're being given full access inside a clandestine industry. It's like a frontier town. This is the modern day gold rush, really, and staking a claim on a piece of land to dig, exploit, and then leave behind. (hose water rushing) So guys down here in the pit are blasting away with high pressure hoses, blasting down all of the ground which eventually is gonna get sift out and all the tiny flakes of gold that are in it will be separated out. (gears ticking and whirring) This silty water is pumped up into trays where the heavier sediment containing the gold is collected. So once they've got enough of this material that has the gold in it, they separate the gold out using mercury. And mercury is extremely poisonous and some of that leaches out into the water. The water that flows into the streams and it kills everything. It builds up in the fish, it builds up in the people living downstream of here. (machines whirring) (hose water rushing) It's so typical, isn't it? I'm talking to the guys here and they're just trying to make a living. They're just decent, nice people, you can't really blame them for what they're doing. This is what they do for a job. And it's a hard life. (hose water rushing) The big problem though, a relatively small mine like this that's only generating a few kilos of gold could be compromising hundreds if not thousands of miles of forest, and more importantly, the waterways. (water rushing) Scientific reports show that 6,000 kilometers of waterways across the Guyana Shield have already been contaminated by gold mining. (water rushing)