Impact of thousands of wildcat gold miners shown as president Jair Bolsonaro is accused of trying to promote their illegal work
Rare and disturbing aerial photographs have laid bare the devastation being inflicted on Brazil’s largest reserve for indigenous people by thousands of wildcat goldminers whose illegal activities have accelerated under the country’s far-right leader, Jair Bolsonaro.
Activists believe as many as 20,000 garimpeiro prospectors are operating within the Yanomami reserve in northern Brazil using speedboats and light aircraft to penetrate the vast expanse of jungle near the border with Venezuela.
Bolsonaro, who has repeatedly bemoaned the size of the Yanomami territory and been accused of emboldening environmental criminals with his pro-development rhetoric, was due to make a provocative trip to a village in the reserve’s south-western tip on Thursday – his first to an indigenous community since becoming president in January 2019. Yanomami leaders denounced the visit as an unwanted attempt to promote illegal mining in their ancestral land.
The images, captured during flyovers early last month, leave no doubt about the intruders’ impact on the 9.6m-hectare (24m-acre) Amazon enclave – nor the impunity with which they are allowed to act in a supposedly protected reserve.
We get these updates on the great and honorable work of global environmental justice lawyers, Paving broad roads for establishing the new jurisprudence for the RIGHTS OF NATURE. Question? what can we, grass-roots advocates do to advance the RIGHTS OF NATURE here in rural Virginia where everything is “natural” meaning rural regions? Seeing these horrors in Brazil and in Ecuador’s Rain Forest creates the heart-felt connection … this is one planet > home for all.
Our strength is the source – designing our humanity.
Thank you for your comment. Friends of Buckingham is partnering with the Virginia Community Rights Network (VACRN). VACRN, with impacted residents are writing an ordinance for Requiring an Assessment of the Compatibility of Metallic Mining with the Right to Freedom from Chemical Trespass.
Corporations have the right to stop us from trespassing on their property. We, as residents of the county, have the right to protect our bodies, air, water and soil from chemical trespass, but it’s up to us to claim that.
The right to do exploratory drilling and /or mining does not give these corporations the right to harm us or our environment.
For more information on the community rights and rights of nature work of VACRN go to: https://vacommunityrights.org/