After fighting illegal mining in the Peruvian Amazon for years, social activist Victor Zambrano is facing constant death threats in a country widely considered to be one of the world's deadliest for environmentalists, he said in an interview issued Tuesday.
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In June, Zambrano was awarded a "Leader of Conservation” by the National Geographic Society for his work on Amazon reforestation in Tambopata, a region that scientists consider a world epicenter of biodiversity.
Zambrano founded the “Kerenda Homet” refuge, named one of the top four private conservation areas in the region by former Environment Minister Antonio Brack in 2010.
The refuge receives tourists who wish to travel sustainably, as well as groups of children from surrounding schools—a third of them from mining families—in a bid to raise awareness about biodiversity.
Victor Zambrano | Photo: Conservamos por Naturaleza
But activism against illegal mining and other environmental issues can result in a heavy price in Peru, a country in which 12 environmentalists lost their lives in 2015, according to a recent report by Global Witness.
“They are looking for you in order to kill you,” warned his friend and neighbor, Alfredo Vracko, less than a week before he was assassinated in November 2015.
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When Zambrano came back from decades of military service in the Marines, he was appalled at the extent to which illegal logging and mining had cleared most of the rain forest he grew up in. The deforestation had affected the whole ecosystem in the Madre de Dios' region, which hosts a staggering 632 species of birds, 168 mammals and up to 1,200 types of butterflies, according to the state-run SERNANP.
But as Madre de Dios' rivers tragically contain deposits of gold, thousands of miners from Peru and neighboring Brazil are attracted to the area, with miners using mercury to separate gold from the soil and in the process contaminating the environment, and poisoning themselves.
An area deforested by illegal gold mining is seen in a zone known as Mega 14, in the southern Amazon region of Madre de Dios. | Photo: Reuters
Close to 60,000 hectares of rain forest in Madre de Dios has been turned into toxic wasteland, filled with dead animals—corresponding to a surface the equivalent of 68,000 soccer fields.
“This is a cancer that destroys everything,” said Zambrano.
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Zambrano first tried to denounce the illegal mining to authorities, but was instead offered 4 kilograms of gold, he told the BBC. As he refused the deal, he started to receive leaflets threatening him with death.
In May, the government declared a state of emergency after it was revealed that 50,000 people, or 41 percent of the region's population, had been exposed to mercury poisoning, according to the Health Ministry. About 30 tons of mercury are being dumped into Peru’s rivers and lakes every year, making Indigenous communities especially vulnerable to exposure as the fish sourced from local rivers provides them with a primary source of protein.
Illegal gold mining in Peru—the world's sixth-largest gold producer—represents about 28 percent of the country's total gold production, according to a report issued in April by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, or GIATOC.
Illegal gold production also accounts for an estimated US$2.6 billion a year, an economic incentive that makes it even more difficult to gain control of the activity.