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In the tropics, cutting trees is mainly driven by agricultural expansion, land grabbing, illegal logging, urbanization, cattle ranching as well as mining. Those drivers depend on socio-economic and political factors. In Colombia, an important worldwide producer of minerals, mining concessions have been granted across more than 3% of the continental territory (more than 8,000 mines), potentially affecting water use and quality, chemical flows to water and soils, health and human rights impacts but also forests. However, there is a global lack of studies that analyze the environmental impacts of legal mining, particularly in areas of high biodiversity...For the first time, a new study I co-authored published in Environmental Research Letters shows that deforestation rates in Colombian mining leases each year have exponentially increased in the last two decades (see Figure 1, bars indicate mining-related deforestation from ~2000 ha in 2001 to more than 20,000 ha in 2017). For instance, in the department of Antioquia, a massive gold producer, 23% of the departmental deforestation occurred in legal mines...Ravaging clear cuts are particularly observed in one hundred mines where more than 400 ha are deforested per mining concession, the equivalent of >500 soccer fields each. Less clear are the reasons behind this mining-related deforestation increase because gold and coal production did not vary much during the same period. Two main reasons can be put forward: (i) massive commercial logging and (ii) illegal external activities related to armed conflict... This story is part of Science X Dialog, where researchers can report findings from their published research articles. Visit this page for information about ScienceX Dialog and how to participate.