Frightened by a new gold rush in the Madeira River, river dwellers from the Rosarinho community, in the municipality of Autazes, Amazonas, denounced to environmental authorities and the Federal Police (PF) the illegal mining and social and environmental impacts in the region that borders Rondônia and is one of the most preserved in the Western Amazon. There are more than 300 rafts extracting the ore, which would have brought, in a fortnight, around 1,800 miners to the municipality. According to specialists, the "invasion" of Madeira River by illegal miners is due to a combination of factors such as: an increase in the price of gold, a drop in environmental inspections, speeches and governmental actions sympathetic to the activity and the ease with which illegal gold can be "legalised".