Canary Gold–BRAZ-CSE / CNYGF-OTC

The Massive, Simple, Scalable Gold Play You’ve Never Heard Of—Yet

Unique ideas are rare in mining/mineral exploration. But Canary Gold (BRAZ-CSE/CNYGF-OTC) has one of the best I’ve heard in a long time.

This idea occurs in Brazil, near the Bolivian border, just as the foothills of the steep Andes meet the flat edges of the Amazon Basin

For the last, oh…say..15 million years…the Madeira river–an Amazon river tributary–has been transporting gold flecks from the Andes mountains into the edge of the flat Amazon Basin.

Just in the last few decades, the Brazilian gov’t estimates that MILLIONS of gold ounces have been “caught” or produced here as dozens and sometimes hundreds of river barges with suction pumps have sucked up the riverbed for decades—going back to the 1970s—and then shake out the flecks of gold like every other placer play in the history of the world.

And here’s the twist: while thousands of artisanal miners and barges have dredged billions in gold directly from the river since the 1970s, no one has ever stepped back to explore where the river used to be.

Canary Gold is the first. And visible gold in six of the first samples located over a 2km square area is proof that the theory is valid. Will there be enough gold found–in economic concentrations–to make even a small part of their 150,000 hectare land package a mine? Exploration will be cheap and quick.

I love this story, but remember–this is still early stage exploration; high risk. And it’s not a perfect story; and I will outline what I perceive to be several risks at the bottom of this article. BUT…

…this play is about scale, simplicity, and location, and it’s rooted in a place the world has already proven to be an alluvial gold factory—Brazil’s Madeira River Basin.

Here’s the story:

A Once-In-A-Career Idea, 25 Years in the Making

The idea was born decades ago when three geologists were working in Brazil–Aussie Jon Hill, Brit Alan Carter and Canadian Andrew Lee Smith. All three of these men have great geological pedigrees.

Hill, a geologist working for AngloGold Ashanti, was tasked with scouting the entire nation of Brazil for gold potential. While major mining houses ignored alluvial-style deposits—deemed too short-lived or inconsistent for billion-dollar balance sheets—Hill saw something different.

He saw scale. He saw geological logic. And from that, he saw the potential for a lot of gold.

Through millions of years of meandering across the landscape, the Madeira River system has carved a 400 km-wide path through the Amazon Basin. It’s one of the most gold-rich waterways in Brazil. Over 7 million ounces of gold are estimated to have been extracted from the Madeira River through artisanal means. This doesn’t even count what’s been lost to smuggling or unrecorded by regulators.

The Madeira River gold is so famous that Parker Schnabel of Discovery Channel’s Parker’s Trails did an episode on it:

Now imagine all the places that river once flowed over the last few million years. Imagine the gold it deposited along those ancient riverbeds, now buried under shallow layers of clay and soil.

That’s what Canary Gold originally optioned: nearly 700 square kilometers (69,000 hectares) over an 80 km corridor south of Porto Velho, the capital city of Rondonia. This ground is outside the current river, but could be sitting right on top of old gold-bearing channels—places the river used to be. That’s the bet here, pure and simple. They have since added 90,000 hectares.

Placer Gold—But Smarter

This isn’t a Yukon-style, pan and sluice play for placer gold. This is placer gold at scale, with modern geophysics, permitting, and exploration tools.

The core of Canary’s thesis is a durable layer of mineralized laterite, known locally as Mocururu, which lies under 20–50 meters of overburden and hosts visible gold and heavy minerals. This Mocururu horizon is present across large swaths of their claims, verified through 15 km of tomography lines and GPR (ground-penetrating radar). The overburden itself—essentially hard mud—is often gold-bearing too.

The Mocururu isn’t a hard rock. It’s a consolidated sedimentary layer, 2–5 meters thick, that would be relatively easy to mine…if it’s economic.

If Canary’s thesis is right and this layer is consistently mineralized at 0.5–1.0 g/t Au, they’ve got a shot at uncovering a world-class deposit—at shallow depths of only 30–60 meters.

They have found visible gold is six samples from their tenements from simple manual panning. That’s a big deal=huge validation of the theory.

Simple Geology. Massive Prize.

Canary’s story excited me because of the team, and because it’s based on clear logic:

• Gold came from the Andes.
• Rivers carried it east for millions of years.
• It was deposited repeatedly as the river shifted over time–proven by over 7 million ounces have been reportedly recovered by the Madeira River dredges over the decades
• Most of the riverbed has never been explored outside its current banks.
• Now we can see those old paths with radar and resistivity tools.

YELLOW AND ORANGE ARE GOOD!!

And what’s more—it’s shallow.

These are not deep, high-cost drill targets. Holes are expected to average just 50 to 70 meters, and that’s all it will take to get a first look. Drilling is set to be completed with sonic rigs, which preserve sediment structure and allow for full recovery—a crucial aspect for gold hosted in loose or semi-consolidated layers.

This is placer mining with a 21st-century toolkit—and potentially the scale of a district.

Scale: The Big Difference

Canary has already mapped 30 kilometers of preserved paleo-channel features across its property—each possibly a ribbon of ancient gold. And the company believes it has 20–30 more kilometers of prospective channel just waiting for permits to catch up.

Now, I wouldn’t directly compare mining the Mocururu to placer mining, though some placer tools like gravity concentrators will be used for testing and maybe even for mining if economic amounts of gold are found.

Canary Gold’s play is more accurately called a paleo-placer deposit. There’s a couple easy—and big—paleo-placer deposits like the one Canary Gold is chasing.

Again, paleo-placer is a type of gold deposit formed by the concentration of gold in ancient riverbeds and conglomerates. The largest gold deposit in the world, the Witwatersrand in South Africa–is this kind of deposit. But it is older so it has fossilized into real rock, and it’s much deeper and much higher grade.

Even if Canary Gold’s Madeira River play works to its potential, the grade here is likely half a gram to a gram over 2-5 metres or so. When I talk about risks, this is one of them.

The Street would need to see 50 holes I would think to ever get excited about that kind of width and grade. So this is very…unconventional. It may take The Street some time to appreciate the scale. But if it works, shallow low cost drilling could make discovery costs per ounce of gold VERY cheap.

Again, that’s the bet pure and simple. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t. It’s early.

The company has found enough gold already to prove their thesis—there is lots of gold in the ground around where the Madeira River has flowed, over the course of millions of years.

OK, so this is a great story–now for the (many) risks:

1. BUT…will it be economic? Yes they have found visible gold in several drill holes outlined to date. But there is nothing yet that shows there is enough gold in high enough concentrations to be economic.
2. They have to spend $5 million to earn the first 49% then do a PEA to get to 70%. Right now they own NOTHING; they are earning their interest by spending money in the ground. They will need to raise a lot of money as a high risk exploration stock to get 70%. And they need to pay the vendors of this latest acquisition some down-the-road money as well.
3. There is a lot of cheap stock out here. The regular founders’ stock, then the vendors’ stock, then seed rounds (in which I bought $100,000 worth of stock at 10 cents/share), the IPO was 17 cents with full warrant at 25 cents and this recent financing is 25 cents with full warrant as well.

But I like the size of the prize here…AND…it’s cheap to test. I suspect a lot of exploration results between now and Christmas–first, there is likely to be widely spaced fences of holes, over many kilometers–and if that works, then tighter. At 70 m depth, the holes are cheap and can happen fast.

If this works, it will be a moving quarry, with back-filling as they rip up the Mocururu, not a mine.

The last thing I’ll leave you with is a sense of who these three men are:

1. Alan Carter is credited with being part of five gold deposits, four of which are in Brazil; 6 years with BHP and 7 years with Rio Tinto before moving into CEO roles in the exploration companies
2. Andrew Lee Smith was Mining Entrepreneur of the Year in Canada in 1994 for his work in developing the Beaufor and Sleeping Giant mines

Jon Hill is simply the most sought after independent exploration geologist in Brazil, after he was tasked with scouting the entire nation of Brazil for gold potential for AngloAshanti Brazil.

Source: https://oilandgas-investments.com/2025/latest-reports/canary-gold-braz-cse-cnygf-otc/