CANAIMA, Venezuela (Reuters) – Venezuela’s army has evicted thousands of people from makeshift towns in one of the world’s most pristine jungles, where wildcat miners lured by high gold prices rip up the land for the precious metal.
From the air, abandoned camps look like yellow scars in the vast forest canopy after an offensive over the last two months that shut hundreds of mines, which the army says produced twice Venezuela’s official gold output, along with other minerals.
“We have stopped them producing of 1 tonne of gold and 5,000 karats of diamonds every month,” General Henry Rangel, said during a recent visit to a camp, only a few minutes flight from the world’s tallest waterfall, Angel Falls.
The camp, called El Triunfo, was littered with empty barrels of the fuel used to power the miners’ powerful water pumps, which churn up topsoil in the search for gold.
Rangel heads the operation against illegal mining in the Caura River basin, known for its biological diversity, and where jungle camps speedily spring up with hotels, bars and other services after a gold strike.
“When a gold rush starts, brothels open up even before food stores,” said Alfredo Villanueva, a wildcat mining leader.
Earlier in June, soldiers found 1,000 miners working in one such camp, where they had built a church, a brothel and a barbershop, and light aircraft flew in and out with supplies. Now only soldiers and stray dogs occupy it.
“We have even taken apart aviation workshops and heavy machinery,” said Defense Minister Carlos Mata, who expressed surprise at the sophistication of El Triunfo camp, one of 357 destroyed by the army, which has evicted 10,000 people.
The socialist government of President Hugo Chavez has for years swung between tolerating illegal mining and trying to end it. In 2006, several miners died in clashes with troops.
Chavez has also dithered about how to develop the gold industry in South America’s top oil exporter, which has some of the region’s largest deposits of the metal.
Caracas has struggled for decades to develop the 17-million-ounce Las Cristinas project, which is itself partly occupied by wildcat miners.
Experts say run-off of mercury, which is used to pull out gold flakes from the churned soil, is worrying, but they are also concerned with the impact on rivers and on ethnic groups, such as the Ye’kwana, Sanema and Hoti Indians who live in the Caura Basin in the south, near Brazil and Guyana.
“The most obvious impact is a virtual ‘nuking’ of sensitive riparian habitats with high-pressure water hoses,” said William Laurance, co-chair of the Conservation Committee of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation.
A riparian zone refers to the banks and other land around a river or stream.
“It causes massive sedimentation of rivers, decimating fisheries and greatly reducing the quality of drinking water for local communities.”
Rivers in the region such as the Paragua, which is also mined, feed Venezuela’s vast Guri hydroelectric dam, and researchers warn sediment may reduce the dam’s useful life.
Rangel said the military operation would be permanent, but experts doubt that the government can control the gold rush, with prices above $1,000 an ounce . “You’re trying to hold the water back really, as long as gold continues its climb upward,” said David Hammond, a forestry expert who has written extensively on the Guyana Shield forests to which the Caura Basin belongs.
“Gold is being used by financial markets as part of the global economy,” Hammond said. “That gold is coming from remote frontiers that are responding accordingly.”
Researches say that the price for the yellow metal has also worsened illegal mining in other Latin American nations, including Brazil and Guyana.
“When prices went up, so did mining activity,” said wildcat miner Villanueva, who accused soldiers and politicians of stealing funds meant to help stop illegal mining.
“The gold produced down here slips out on back roads to Brazil, it leaves no benefits for the Venezuela state.”
