Protecting the Amazon with spatial intelligence

The Amazon rainforest serves as a home to some of the most isolated Indigenous communities across South America, including the Yuri and Passe communities in Colombia's Rio Pure region. They’ve chosen for centuries to avoid broader society, and the isolation is essential to their survival, protecting them from disease, violence, and outside disruption.

But illegal gold mining is threatening that way of life. Mining operations physically destroy riverbanks and forests while releasing mercury and other toxic chemicals into waterways. These illegal miners are increasingly entering the ancestral territories of isolated communities, placing both their environment and their existence at risk.

This Vantor satellite image shows the maloca, or communal longhouse, of an isolated Indigenous community in the Amazon.

The Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) is an organization that has partnered with indigenous communities for nearly 30 years, including working to protect the territories of isolated Indigenous communities. As a Vantor Purpose Partner, ACT has access to Vantor’s spatial intelligence to protect these communities and the rainforest they call home, in collaboration with the Amazonian Alliance for the Reduction of Gold Mining Impacts (AARIMO in Spanish). AARIMO is a network of local civil social organizations that work to reduce the impacts of gold mining in the Colombian Amazon. Protecting these communities also means protecting the remote forests and waterways that sustain them. 

Using insights from Vantor’s current satellite imagery and a historical baseline from Vantor's archive that spans more than 20 years, the team has helped document hundreds of illegal mining barges across the region. Through collaborative information-sharing processes involving AARIMO and other stakeholders, these findings have informed actions by relevant authorities and partner institutions in Colombia and Brazil, contributing to the destruction of more than 115 illegal mining barges and the protection of territories inhabited by isolated Indigenous peoples. 

Monitoring a remote and threatened territory

Río Puré National Natural Park is one of the most remote areas in the Colombian Amazon, and it’s increasingly becoming a target of illegal miners. Monitoring illegal activities from the ground is dangerous, difficult, and time-consuming. Insights from Vantor’s high-resolution satellite imagery provide ACT and its local partners with a safer way to observe changes across vast, inaccessible areas.

This before-and-after satellite image comparison shows the destruction caused by illegal gold mining on the Rio Pure over a few years.

AARIMO team members work together within Vantor Hub to identify illegal mining activity, monitor the movement of dredges, and provide actionable intelligence to enforcement agencies. Vantor Hub’s tasking capabilities have allowed the team to obtain a complete view of the full length of the Puré River. With 15 cm HD resolution imagery,the team can make distinctions between different kinds of illegal activity on the ground and support timely responses while reducing the need for potentially invasive overflights by planes or drones.

Taking decisive action with spatial intelligence

In November 2025, a binational military operation traveled for days by boat and helicopter into Río Puré National Natural Park. Guided in part by spatial intelligence from Vantor, the police navigated the river to locate illegal dredges and destroy mining equipment with explosives.

“The resolution and accuracy of Vantor’s imagery helps monitor and map mining activity with unprecedented detail,” said Brian Hettler, ACT Director of Mapping. “Because these regions are so vast and remote, consistent ground-based monitoring is impossible. Vantor’s insights and persistent monitoring provide critical information that supports local coalitions and public agencies working to address threats to isolated Indigenous territories and surrounding ecosystems.”

Photojournalist Federico Rios accompanied the operation and documented its efforts. His images illustrate the extraordinary challenges of enforcing environmental protections in the region. Officers faced difficult terrain, hidden waterways, and armed resistance from miners who fired sporadically from the riverbanks before disappearing into the jungle. Read his full account of the operation here.

Image credit Federico Rios.

The work also revealed the human and environmental consequences of illegal mining. During the operation, officers rescued a dog abandoned on a dredge and brought him out of the forest. While one rescued dog is only a small moment in a much larger crisis, the operation reflects what is at stake: the safety of people, wildlife, and ecosystems that have few other advocates.

Image credit Federico Rios.

Protecting the Amazon

The Amazon faces immense and growing pressure from illegal mining, deforestation, and criminal networks. Addressing those threats requires strong partnerships, local knowledge, and the ability to see what is happening across places that are otherwise nearly impossible to reach. 

Together with ACT and its partners, Vantor is helping transform satellite imagery into insight—and insight into action—to protect the Amazon and the people who have cared for it for generations. 

About the Amazon Conservation Team

Celebrating 30 years, the Amazon Conservation Team partners with Indigenous and other local communities to protect tropical forests. We envision a region of thriving biological and cultural diversity, conserved in perpetuity by local peoples able to utilize the best of traditional and western knowledge to protect their ancestral lands. Working with our community partners, primarily in Colombia, Brazil, and Suriname, our approach focuses on three strategies: promoting sustainable land management and protection, promoting communities' secure and sustainable livelihoods, and strengthening communities' governance and culture.