Brazilian federal authorities carried out two operations against unauthorized gold mining in the Amazon at the end of October, targeting river dredges near the Jirau hydroelectric plant in Rondônia and equipment inside the Kayapó Indigenous Territory in Pará.
The actions are at the investigation and enforcement stage. The Federal Police, known as the PF, did not publicly name individuals or companies, and the operations do not establish criminal culpability. No response from alleged operators, financiers or other targets was included in the releases consulted.
For an international audience, the operations show how Brazilian enforcement is addressing illegal gold extraction through its physical infrastructure: disabling machinery in places where removal is not practical, while using the resulting investigations to trace suppliers, financiers, logistics providers and buyers of gold.
Dredges disabled upstream of Jirau
On October 30, the PF and Brazil’s environmental enforcement agency Ibama conducted the second phase of Operation Nêmesis on the Madeira River in Porto Velho, Rondônia. The operation focused on dredges operating about 27 kilometres upstream from the Jirau hydroelectric plant.
The PF said it cross-checked dredge locations against records from the National Mining Agency and confined its action to sites without a Permissão de Lavra Garimpeira, a permit for small-scale mining, or environmental licensing. Satellite imagery indicated that dredges had been concentrated in the unauthorized stretch since April 2025, according to the force.
Before disabling the vessels, officers removed mercury and other harmful substances, the PF said. They then seized the material, firearms and equipment used to burn amalgam, the material formed in a mercury-based gold-recovery process. The environmental relevance is direct: mercury handling is central to the alleged mining method identified in the operation, while the location on a major Amazon tributary places the enforcement action near critical river and energy infrastructure.
The PF said each large floating dredge was worth more than R$4 million on average, an agency assessment rather than a court finding. It cited Article 111 of Decree 6,514/2008 as the basis for rendering equipment unusable when removal or storage is impracticable, or when maintaining it would create environmental or safety risks. According to the PF, towing or storing the dredges from the remote river location was not feasible.
A separate operation inside Kayapó territory
A day earlier, on October 29, the PF and the Indigenous affairs agency Funai conducted Operation Escudo in the Kayapó Indigenous Territory in Pará. The PF published its account on October 30.
Authorities said they disabled three hydraulic excavators, three pickup trucks, four motorcycles, eight engines and 19 support shacks used in the suspected illegal extraction of gold. The release also said an injured worker was rescued and that authorities suspected degrading labor conditions. That suspicion is not a concluded labor or criminal finding.
The difference between the two operations reflects the varied logistics of unauthorized mining. On the Madeira, enforcement concentrated on floating dredges and materials associated with mercury processing. In Kayapó territory, the reported targets included earth-moving machinery, transport vehicles, engines and temporary support structures. In both cases, disabling equipment can interrupt activity at a site, but the PF’s next investigative task is broader: identifying the people and networks that finance, supply, organize and receive gold from the operations under scrutiny.
A large-scale challenge beyond individual raids
The operations come against a backdrop of major expansion in Amazon gold mining. Independent reporting citing the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, or IPAM, found that the area affected by gold mining in the Amazon in 2024 was 20 times its 1985 level. Mining on Indigenous lands covered 24 times as much area and had expanded nearly sevenfold between 2016 and 2024.
Those comparisons help put the enforcement actions in perspective. Disabling machinery can impose an immediate operational loss and reduce the capacity to mine at a particular location. Yet the same reporting found that enforcement has not eliminated illegal mining and that operations can displace activity. This means the policy challenge extends beyond equipment destruction to the supply chains and commercial channels that allow unauthorized extraction to resume elsewhere.
That is why the PF’s stated investigative focus matters. In the Madeira case, the force said it will seek to identify financiers, logistical operators, mercury suppliers and receivers of illegally extracted gold. The inquiry therefore reaches beyond workers found at a mining site and toward the supporting network needed to obtain equipment, move inputs and bring gold into commerce.
What happens next
The immediate result of the October operations was the disabling and seizure of specified mining-related assets and the removal of hazardous substances in the Madeira action. Neither release announced charges, identified suspects publicly or described a judicial determination.
The next documented step is the continuing investigation into the alleged networks behind the activity. Whether those inquiries result in identified suspects, formal accusations or other legal measures remains unresolved. For now, the operations represent discrete federal enforcement actions in two Amazon regions where the environmental, Indigenous-territory and criminal-investigation dimensions of unauthorized gold mining overlap.