- Illegal miners are adapting their tactics in the Yanomami Indigenous Territory in Brazil’s Amazonas and Roraima states to evade efforts in the last few years to remove them, found researchers.
- Miners are fragmenting into smaller groups instead of concentrating near airstrips, going deeper into the middle of the Amazon forest, moving to specific border areas with Venezuela and paying high prices to continue their activities.
- Illegal mining is significantly down in the territory due to the government operation, said Indigenous people and authorities, though concerns remain for the health of isolated Indigenous people.
- Brazil’s government says it is in the phase of “scavenging the territory” to remove miners deep in the forest which are unable to be detected by satellite imagery and require long walks into the Amazon.
BRASÍLIA — Illegal miners have adapted their tactics in the Yanomami Indigenous Territory as Brazilian authorities seek to remove all the illegal occupants from the Amazon land, according to a recent report.
Since a peak in illegal mining in 2022, there have been “significant and successive reductions” in the rainforest from 2023 to 2025, researchers using satellite imagery found. However, “mining activity was not completely eradicated,” as miners change how they operate, decentralize and move to borders. Sources also raise concerns about the health of isolated Indigenous people, who are at risk of the spread of malaria linked to illegal mining. In 2024 and 2025, mining impacted 129 hectares (318.7 acres) of land, down from about 1,800 hectares (4,448 acres) in 2022.
The report, conducted by the NGO Instituto Socioambiental (ISA) and Amazon Conservation, said the steep decline is a reflection of the operations initiated by the Brazilian government in 2023, when president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva came to power and declared a health emergency due to widespread disease and mercury contamination in rivers from mining.
“Illegal mining activity, the invaders, continue on Yanomami land, but the rest have already been expelled,” Dário Kopenawa Yanomami, vice-president of HAY (the Hutukara Yanomami Association) and son of Davi Kopenawa, a spokesman for the Yanomami people, told Mongabay.
“The government has carried out many operations, but other invaders, miners, are difficult to remove. They remain in some specific locations, such as border areas with Guyana and Venezuela. These miners who are on the borders continue to invade our land,” Yanomami added.
According to the report, miners remain in borders to possibly circumvent inspection by using hubs in the remote southern Venezuelan Amazon, such as an airstrip in Simada Ocho.
In an interview with Mongabay, Nilton Tubino, the head of the Government House in Roraima, responsible for coordinating various government agencies including the Armed Forces and Ibama (Brazil’s environment agency), acknowledged that there is “resistance” from a few gold miners in some parts of the territory.
But large camps and airstrips, which were a common sight until 2022, have been eradicated from the territory, he said. Tubino said that the government estimates a 99% drop in the opening of new mining areas since 2023.
“We know that mining hasn’t [entirely] ended. In reality, there’s a new shift,” he told Mongabay. “[The miners] are increasingly going into the middle of the forest. So, our operations have also had to adapt. They are longer, [require] staying in the bush, walking a lot, walks of 100 kilometers [62 miles], 80 kilometers [50 miles].”
Developing new strategies
The coordinator of the Government House stated that the operation to remove the illegal miners is currently in a phase of “scavenging the territory.”
“[There are illegal mining sites] that you can’t identify by satellite image. You’ll rarely see a change in the water’s color, which was another easier way to detect them,” he said. “It’s a real challenge to walk around. And now we’re entering a somewhat difficult period [of the year] because of the rains, and there are also difficulties with flights.”
Last week, the Government House announced that, since its establishment in 2024, it has carried out 10,554 enforcement actions in Yanomami territory, resulting in the seizure of 249 kilograms (about 549 pounds) of gold, 184 vehicles, 51 boats, 164 firearms, and over one ton of mercury. During the same period, 907 illegal mining camps, 87 airstrips, 55 aircraft, 312 boats, 171 barges, 39 dredges, 201 communication antennas, 578 electric generators, and 2,229 motors were destroyed.
According to Tubino, a gram (0.03 ounces) of gold is currently valued at around R$ 750 (about US$ 144.60) in the city of Boa Vista. Thus, the total gold seizure since 2024 is estimated at US$ 36 million.
ISA geographer Estêvão Benfica Senra, who co-authored the study with geographer Laura Mota, confirmed to Mongabay that “practically no traces of these more visible camps are found.” However, gold miners have “developed strategies to remain in smaller groups,” for example, sometimes leaving the riverbanks and venturing deeper into the forest.
“The picture that our report paints is this: that moment of uncontrolled illegal mining presence has indeed been overcome. What we have today are these smaller, more fragmented groups that use strategies to try to survive,” said Senra.
In contrast to the previous concentration around airstrips, new mining areas indicate a trend towards fragmentation of mining activity.
While inside the territory, miners face high prices of goods due to the government operation which makes mining activity increasingly difficult.
“The cost of maintaining the mining operations today is very high,” said Tubino.
A liter of diesel fuel, essential for the operation of dredges, costs around 70 Brazilian Reais ($19.10) in the Indigenous territory, while the average price in the nearby city of Boa Vista at the beginning of June 2026 was around 7.70 Brazilian Reais ($2.10). Some small planes continue to risk transporting miners into the territory. A round-trip “ticket” costs around 20 grams of gold per person, according to Tubino, or about 15,000 Brazilian Reais (US$ 2,891) — more than double the cost of a round trip from Brazil to Paris in June 2026.
A bottle of brandy sells to gold miners for around 700 Brazilian Reais ($191), while it can be bought for as little as 28 Brazilian Reais ($7.64) in shops in Boa Vista.
Worries for isolated Indigenous people
Also living in the Yanomami Indigenous Territory, near the Serra da Estrutura mountain range, is an isolated Indigenous people known as the Moxihatëtëma Thëpe. A 2024 report by Sesai (the Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health) and Funai (the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples) estimated their population at between 75 and 100 individuals.
In 2023, an overflight conducted by Funai found “several points of illegal mining activity near the isolated Indigenous groups” and indicated that possible escape routes for the gold miners “pass through the area occupied by Moxihatëtëma Thëpe, placing them at high risk of contact.”
According to Estêvão Senra from the ISA, in 2025, it was found that “the illegal mining zone around isolated groups had been greatly reduced,” but it “has not yet been completely neutralized.”
Indigenous rights activist, Carlos Travassos, who is also a consultant for ISA and former head of the isolated and recently contacted Indigenous groups sector at Funai in Brasília, worked in the territory in early June. He said that as long as illegal mining activity persists within the territory, isolated groups remain at risk.
This is especially because illegal mining activity is linked to outbreaks of malaria, he told Mongabay.
“The occurrence of malaria is very worrying in populations surrounding isolated peoples. In several cases, such as in the Javari Valley region [State of Amazonas], it proved harmful after contacts were made with the Korubo people in 2014, who witnessed and reported deaths of members of this community from malaria before the contact itself,” said Travassos.
According to the Ministry of Health, there was a “consistent reduction” of 21.4% in malaria transmission within the territory — from 32,265 cases in 2023 to 27,887 in 2025. There was also an 80.8% reduction in deaths from 2023 to 2025, said the ministry.
At the time of the government intervention, the territory was devastated by famine and high rates of malaria. During Jair Bolsonaro’s government (2019-2022) — which pursued a pro-mining policy in the Amazon and opposed the demarcation of new Indigenous lands — the number of Yanomami deaths from malnutrition increased by 331%, with 117 deaths, compared to the four previous years.
In a statement to Mongabay, Funai said the persistence of residual pockets of illegal mining activity “reinforces the need to maintain continuous and integrated monitoring, inspection, and territorial protection actions.”
Since 2023, the Ministry of Health said it hired “an additional 1,440 health workers,” raising the total number of staff in the territory to 2,130.
“The government has to continue operations until illegal mining activity ends, that’s important,” said Dario Kopenawa Yanomami.
Banner image: The Brazilian government estimates that 7,000 illegal miners remain inside the Yanomami Indigenous Territory. Image courtesy of Fernando Frazão/Agência Brasil.
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