Gold extraction via small scale mining in the Amazon rainforest of Peru has become one of the greatest threats to deforestation and land degradation in the Amazon, especially in the Madre de Dios region which is one of the last biggest remnants of continuous tropical rainforest in the world. Restoration of these degraded ecosystems have become a priority in the last decade but without concrete actions, however, few research has been conducted in response to these restoration activities nor natural regeneration. The significance of this research was to 1) To Analyze how gold mining affects forest structure, species richness and diversity in the Amazon Rainforest of Madre de Dios, Peru. 2) To assess variation on diversity levels in secondary successional forest compared to that found in primary forest 3) to identify variations in the gold extraction methods reported in the region and how i...