In a patch of rainforest in northern Sumatra, a 28-year-old in a jeans and tall rubber boots snubs out out his cigarette and pulls a headlamp over his short black hair. Standing under a tarp, he flicks the light on and leans over the entrance of a narrow shaft lined with wooden planks that he and other miners cut from trees that once stood here. He gives a sharp tug on a rope that dangles 100 meters, plateauing in sections, and slides down. For hours, the man, Sarial, will use a pick to scrape away and bag rocks that are hauled to the surface by another miner, using a wooden wheel.

Inside this ore, being dug up daily in the Ulu Masen “protected forest,” is gold.

Metal drums spin loudly nearby, each crushing about 10 pounds of rocks. What the miners have poured into each drum has long been banned for such use in the developing world: mercury. Two teaspoons of the silver, metallic substance, bought from Medan, were put into each drum. The amalgam will be collected in three hours and the spent “tailings” waste will dumped into terraced pools and left to dry.

Bukari, a 40-year-old local with a thick build, shrugs when asked if he fears the mercury with harm him. “One day, maybe. But it’s still worth it.”

The nearby community of Gampong claims it didn’t realize the forests contained gold until a private mining company, PT Woyla Aceh Minerals - one of at least 13 with concessions here - started exploratory drilling about a decade ago. When it halted operations several years ago, some 3,000 miners moved in. They are mostly local and were trained by a technician from Java.

“We’re happy the company left,” said Bukari. With good quality gold here, the roughly 200 men collectively earn about 3 billion rupiah ($300,000) a month.

“Now all of a sudden, men have motorbikes and can build a house,” M. Sabi, a community organizer, said. “But the forest is being destroyed.”

The clear-cutting of the rainforest by miners and loggers has driven some of its remaining elephants onto roads and crops, and conflict with farmers is on the rise. One elephant died last week after being snared on a wire.

When it rains, the toxic mine tailings will find their way down the steep slopes into a river as runoff. But the river passes through a another community, “so they don’t think about it,” Pak Sulaiman, a local man, said.

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