PERU · ILLEGAL GOLD MINING
Key Facts
- —The country Peru is a major gold producer, and its northern Amazon region of Loreto borders Colombia.
- —Why it matters Gold is priced in dollars, and river dredges can pollute the Nanay, a main water source for Iquitos.
- —Why now A Peruvian newspaper highlighted the findings on Friday 23 October, and a new monthly count appeared Thursday.
- —What happened Satellite monitors counted more than 700 gold dredges in 13 Loreto rivers across 2025 and 2026.
- —The numbers Nanay 421 dredges, Marañón 108, Tigre 67, with the Mazán also among the four worst hit.
- —What it means for you Gold investors and buyers face an Amazon supply chain that Peru struggles to police.
- —Still open Whether enforcement can keep dredges off the rivers, and who ends up buying the gold.
- —Power Index Peru ranks 5th of 14 in The Rio Times Latin America Power Index, with 54.7 points (October 2026 edition).
Satellite monitors have counted more than 700 illegal gold dredges, floating rigs that suck gold-bearing sediment from river beds, in 13 rivers of Peru’s Loreto region. The newspaper La República put the finding back in the news on Friday 23 October 2026, and a separate monthly check published on Thursday 22 October counted 28 gold dredges on two of those rivers in September.
For US readers the link is the gold price, which is set in dollars on world markets and which Peru’s Conservación Amazónica (ACCA), a partner in the report, names as the main driver of the boom. The monitors also say Peru has made less progress in tracing gold sales and money laundering than in destroying equipment, which matters to any American who buys or invests in gold.
Peru has been trying to tighten the net on illegal gold, as we covered in Peru Tightens the Net on Illegal Gold and the Money Behind It. This report shows what the problem looks like on the rivers of the north, around the Amazon city of Iquitos.
What the Satellite Report Found
The report, called MAAP number 247, was published on 16 August 2026 by the Monitoring of the Andes Amazon Program, an initiative of the nonprofit Amazon Conservation with support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. It counts more than 700 dredges in Loreto’s rivers in 2025 and 2026, nearly half (46%) of all it has recorded there since 2017.
Across that whole period the monitors detected or documented more than 1,500 dredges in Loreto, and the 2025 and 2026 count runs through June 2026. They found dredges in 13 rivers: Atacuari, Chambira, Cotuhe, Curaray, Marañón, Mazán, Nanay, Napo, Patayacu, Pintuyacu, Putumayo, Tigre and Yaguas.
The four worst-hit rivers are the Nanay, Marañón, Tigre and Mazán. MAAP recorded 421 dredges on the Nanay in 2025 and 2026, 108 on the Marañón by 2025 and 67 on the Tigre in 2025 and 2026.
On the Putumayo, which forms part of the border with Colombia, 17 of the 29 dredges recorded since 2020 date from 2025 and 2026. MAAP says dredges contaminate rivers through the substances used to separate gold, most notably mercury.
In Plain English
- Dredge: a floating rig that sucks sediment off a river bed so gold can be separated from it.
- Loreto: Peru’s northern Amazon region, whose main city is Iquitos.
- MAAP: a satellite-monitoring project of the nonprofit Amazon Conservation.
- ACCA: Conservación Amazónica, the Peruvian group that supplies much of the data.
- FEMA: Peru’s environmental prosecutors, who oversee raids on illegal mines.
Why the Nanay River Matters
The Nanay is the river most hit, with 1,076 dredges recorded along it between 2021 and 2026. MAAP says authorities declared states of emergency because of contamination of the main water source for the city of Iquitos.
ACCA counted up to 48 dredges on the Nanay at the same time in August 2026, and 20.12 hectares of riverside and flood forest lost to dredge mining there in 2025 and 2026, the news site INFOREGION reported on 23 September. On 23 September the government also published Supreme Decree 136-2026-PCM in the official gazette El Peruano, declaring a 60-day state of emergency in Alto Nanay district.
Under the decree the national police keep order with support from the armed forces, and rights such as free movement and the inviolability of the home are restricted. INFOREGION said the measure targets illegal mining and the criminal groups around it.
On Thursday 22 October INFOREGION reported September results from RAMI, a radar-satellite platform run by the Illegal Mining Observatory. It counted 28 dredges in Maynas province that month, 22 on the Nanay and 6 on the Mazán.
Forest Loss and Mining Rights on the Marañón
On the Marañón, MAAP found gold mining spreading from the river onto land in the Manseriche district, with 868 hectares of forest lost to mining by 2026. Of that, 493 hectares were lost in 2025 and 2026, about 57% by our own arithmetic.
As of June 2026 MAAP counted 241 mining concessions in Manseriche, including 122 titled and 115 pending. Only 9 registrations exist in the national formalisation registry known as REINFO for the district, and six of them involve mining rights that do not appear in the mining cadastre.
Across Loreto, ACCA says concessions rose from 247 in August 2025 to 510 this year, as INFOREGION reported in September. ACCA stresses that a concession does not mean illegal mining is taking place on it.
How Peru Has Responded
MAAP stresses that Peru already bans dredges in rivers under Legislative Decree 1100, so the spread is a problem of enforcement and not of missing law. Its satellite monitoring shows that illegal mining quickly reappears where dredges have been destroyed.
La República reported that the Navy’s fifth Captaincy District ran an operation called Ayaymama from 3 to 5 October 2026 upriver of Puca Urco on the Nanay, under environmental prosecutors (FEMA). It said troops destroyed a large raft, two metal rafts adapted as dredges, six half-sunk rafts and a supply camp with motors and pumps.
The paper also quoted Interior Minister César Astudillo as saying there is no debate about mining, only “a confrontation between the State and the criminal economies that use gold to finance violence.” It said the authorities will continue such operations to strengthen control of the river headwaters.
ACCA’s Sidney Novoa, who directs its mapping and conservation technology, told INFOREGION in September that three factors lie behind the advance: cuts to field budgets for prosecutors, the election period that began in mid-2025 and, above all, the high international gold price. He said that price remains a strong incentive even when miners risk losing equipment in raids.
What It Means for You
Investors and buyers of gold cannot tell from a price chart how much metal comes from rivers where dredges are banned. MAAP says the state has done less to investigate gold marketing and money laundering than to destroy equipment.
Peru and the United States have also been stepping up security cooperation: on 14 October El Peruano reported that Defense Minister Rafael Belaunde met the head of US Southern Command in Iquitos, with illegal mining among the threats for closer cooperation, as we covered in Peru and US Step Up Fight on Illegal Mining. For the wider picture see our guides Peru Natural Resources Explained 2026 and Who Dominates Peru, Elites and Regions Explained.
Travellers heading to Iquitos or Lima can find practical background in our Peru Explained 2026 guide and our Lima expat city guide. Elsewhere in the Peruvian Amazon, Indigenous leaders in the north reported more than 60 dredges on one river, as we covered in Peru Tribes Report 60 Illegal Mining Dredges.
What Is Not Known
The counts are detections from satellite images and reports from other institutions, so they are not a count of dredges working on a single day. MAAP’s 2025 and 2026 figures run only through June, and ACCA’s highest simultaneous count on the Nanay was 48 in August.
The details of the Ayaymama operation and the Interior Minister’s quote come from La República alone, and we could not open a Navy statement. The sources do not say how much gold the dredges produce, who buys it, or whether the Alto Nanay emergency has reduced dredging.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many illegal gold dredges are in Loreto?
The monitoring project MAAP recorded more than 700 dredges in Loreto in 2025 and 2026, through June 2026. It has documented more than 1,500 since 2017.
Which rivers are most affected?
The Nanay, Marañón, Tigre and Mazán are the worst hit, according to MAAP. The Nanay alone had 421 dredges recorded in 2025 and 2026.
Are gold dredges legal in Peru?
No, Peru bans dredges and similar equipment in bodies of water under Legislative Decree 1100. MAAP says the problem is enforcement, not a missing law.
Why does the Nanay River matter?
It is a main source of drinking water for the city of Iquitos. Authorities declared a 60-day emergency in Alto Nanay district on 23 September 2026.
Why does this matter to US readers?
Gold is priced in dollars, and ACCA says the high world price drives the dredging. The monitors say Peru has traced gold sales and money laundering less than it has destroyed equipment.
Sources: MAAP #247, River gold mining expansion in the northern Peruvian Amazon (Loreto region), 16 August 2026; La República, 23 October 2026; INFOREGION, 22 October 2026; INFOREGION, 23 September 2026; INFOREGION on Supreme Decree 136-2026-PCM, 23 September 2026.
This article was produced by The Rio Times’ automated newsroom system. How we use AI · Report an error · Editorial responsibility: Matthias Camenzind, Editor-in-Chief