In this photo released by the Indonesian National Search and Rescue Agency (BASARNAS), rescuers prepare to head out to the site of a landslide that killed a number of people, in Suwawa on Sulawesi Island, Indonesia on July 8, 2024. Photo: BASARNAS via AP

Rescue workers searched for dozens of missing people on July 9, digging through tons of mud and the rubble left by a landslide that hit an unauthorised traditional gold mining area on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island and killed at least 11 people.

More than 100 villagers were digging for grains of gold on July 7 in the remote and hilly village of Bone Bolango when tons of mud plunged down the surrounding hills and buried their makeshift camps, said Heriyanto, head of the provincial Search and Rescue Office.

Rescue operations

Rescuers recovered six more bodies buried under tons of mud in a devastated hamlet where the gold mine is located.

“Improved weather allowed us to recover more bodies,” said Heriyanto, who goes by a single name, like many Indonesians.

According to data released on July 9 by his office, some 52 villagers managed to escape from landslide, about 23 people were pulled out alive by rescuers, including 18 injured, and 17 bodies were recovered, including three women and a 4-year-old boy. Some 45 others are missing, it said.

National Disaster Management Agency spokesperson Abdul Muhari said torrential rains that have pounded the mountainous district since July 6 triggered the landslide and broke an embankment, causing floods up to the roofs of houses in five villages in Bone Bolango, which is part of a mountainous district in Gorontalo Province. Nearly 300 houses were affected and more than 1,000 people fled for safety

Challenging Rescue Operations Amid Adverse Conditions

Authorities deployed more than 200 rescuers, including police and military personnel, with heavy equipment to search for the dead and missing in a rescue operation that has been hampered by heavy rains, unstable soil, and the rugged, forested terrain, said Afifuddin Ilahude, a local rescue official.

“With many missing and some remote areas still unreachable, the death toll was likely to rise,” Mr. Ilahude said, adding that sniffer dogs were also being mobilized in the search.

Videos released by the National Search and Rescue Agency show rescue personnel using farm tools and sometimes their bare hands, pulling a mud-caked body from the thick mud before placing it in a black bag to take away for burial.

Monsoon rains cause frequent landslides and flash floods in Indonesia, an archipelago nation of more than 17,000 islands where millions of people live in mountainous areas or near floodplains.

Informal mining operations in Indonesia

Informal mining operations are common in Indonesia, providing a tenuous livelihood to thousands who labour in conditions with a high risk of serious injury or death. Landslides, flooding and collapses of tunnels are just some of the hazards facing miners. Much of gold ore processing involves highly toxic mercury and cyanide and workers frequently use little or no protection.

The country’s last major mining-related accident occurred in April 2022, when a landslide crashed onto an illegal traditional gold mine in North Sumatra’s Mandailing Natal district, killing 12 women who were looking for gold.

In February 2019, a makeshift wooden structure in an illegal gold mine in North Sulawesi province collapsed due to shifting soil and the large number of mining holes. More than 40 people were buried and died.

A bird is caught in a mist nest set up in a forest to trap small animals while researching signs of mercury contamination, at the Los Amigos Biological Station, in Los Amigos, in the Madre de Dios region, Peru. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Tropical birds, from kingfishers to wrens to warblers, are showing signs of mercury contamination as artisanal and small-scale gold mining operations reach deeper into jungles, finds a new research.

Birds living within 7 km (4 miles) of such gold mining activity were found to have mercury concentrations over four times higher than those living at other sites across the tropics of Central and South America, according to the study published on Tuesday in the journal Ecotoxicology.

“It’s a wake-up call for bird conservation internationally across the tropics,” said lead author Chris Sayers, a conservation biologist at the University of California Los Angeles.

Tropical bird biodiversity has been declining in recent decades, but scientists are not fully sure why. “Based on the levels here, it’s reasonable to suggest that mercury may be playing a role,” Mr. Sayers said.

Over a 17-year period ending in 2023, dozens of scientists collected thousands of feather, blood and tissue samples from 322 bird species across nine countries in Central and South America and the West Indies, creating the world’s largest database to date on mercury concentrations in birds.

The research adds to a growing understanding of how mercury, which is used by gold miners to separate the precious metal from sediment, is impacting wildlife in the tropics.

Artisanal gold mining is often either carried out illegally in protected areas, or done informally outside reserves but without explicit government permission.

Earlier this year, Reuters reported for the first time that scientists were finding mammals, from titi monkeys to ocelots, showing signs of mercury contamination near a Peruvian gold mining hotspot.

Absorbing or ingesting mercury-contaminated water or food has been found to cause neurological illness, immune diseases and reproductive failure in humans and some birds.

Birds are the “canary in the gold mine,” Mr. Sayers said, as they are sensitive to mercury pollution and easily accessible, allowing scientists to take the temperature of overall ecosystem health.

The collected samples revealed some of the highest-ever recorded mercury concentrations in songbirds. Birds that ate meat or lived in aquatic habitats were also found to have the highest overall mercury levels.

Hotspots for mercury contamination included Madre de Dios, Peru, and Ayapel, Colombia — centres of artisanal gold mining.

Birds in central Belize also had high mercury concentrations, with scientists speculating it could be due to gaseous mercury emissions from local landfill incineration, or coal combustion in the surrounding region.