Alexander von Humboldt and the environment

Alexander von Humboldt was born one day like today in 1769.

Here you have an interesting article - in Spanish - about global warming and Humboldt.

I wish scientists could carry out the same kind of experiments in Venezuela as they did in Ecuador now and see what level of environment destruction has taken place in what he visited 215 years ago. Unfortunately, Venezuela is now a complete failed  state so that it is almost impossible to carry out scientific work without getting mugged or worse. 

Oh, Alexander! If you saw how much Venezuelans have managed to destroy their environment!

Fish smuggling in Venezuela

The German newspaper Die Zeit has an interesting article with pictures Reuter's journalist Carlos García Rawlins took in Apure shwing how the smuggling of fish to neighboring Colombia takes place.

Think about how preposterous the idea of smuggling fish within neighbouring countries in Europe or even North America would be. In Venezuela it makes economic sense. That is consequence of the idiotic economic policies and general corruption as promoted by Chavismo.

Mehr Umweltzerstörung in Venezuela: Groß-Valencia

Venezuela hat eine der strengsten Umweltgesetzgebung, die es auf der Welt gibt. Dennoch wird die Umwelt hier mit den Füßen so brutal getreten, wie kaum anderswo in Südamerika. Jetzt steht das Groß-Valencia-Gebiet vor einer sozialen Katastrophe: massive Wasserknappheit und Wasserverseuchung.

In dieser Region wohnen ungefähr zwei Millionen Menschen. Das Wasser, das diese Menschen aus den Wasserhähnen bekommen, ist seit Jahren einfach nur Dreck. Vor 15 Jahren konnten sie das Wasser immer noch trinken. Jetzt kauft jeder, der kann, Mineralwasser, um zu trinken und alle Armen versuchen, das Wasser zuerst zu kochen, bevor sie es trinken. Leider ist die Verseuchung jetzt nicht mehr organischer Natur. Das "Trinkwasser" ist voll von Chemikalien aller Art...sehr oft krebserregend. Die Chávez-Regierung hat Fehler nach Fehler gemacht und die Maduro-Regierung ist einfach eine Fortsetzung davon. 

Valenciasee: alles verseucht

• Zuerst hat die Nationalregierung den schon damals sehr verseuchten Valenciasee mit dem Wasserspeicher Pao-Cachinche in Verbindung gebracht. Der Grund war, dass der Valenciasee-Wasserspiegel immer weiter wuchs und man nicht wusste, was man mit diesem Wasser tun konnte. Der Pao-Cachinche-Speicher aber versorgte Valencia mit Wasser. Die Regierung hatte Kläranlagen in der Los Guayos-Gemeinde in Betrieb genommen aber ihre Instandhaltung vernachlässigt und ihre Erweiterung einfach ausgeschlossen. 
• Die nationale Regierung hat immer wieder mit der Kontrolle von Abwässern gepfuscht: Abwässer aller Art wurden ohne jegliche Reinigungsverfahren Richtung Valenciasee zugelassen, solange es sich um Abwässer der Comunas oder der Boligarchen handelte.
• Die nationale und regionale Regierungen haben zugelassen, dass Elendsviertel überall um den Valenciasee - vor allem in der Nähe von Valencia und Maracay - sowie um den Pao-Cachinche-Wasserspeicher entstehen und dass dort keine Wasseraufbereitungsanlagen eingesetzt werden
• Die Beamten, die die nationale Regierung für den Betrieb der Wasserkläranlagen angestellt hat, sind völlig inkompetent und können die erforderlichen Geräte und Substanzen für den Betrieb der Anlagen wegen der chaotischen Währungskontrolle und Finanzlage der Regierung nicht erwerben.

Seit einiger Zeit ist der Pao-Cachinche-Wasserspeicher so verseucht, dass die nationale Regierung einen anderen Wasserspeicher, den Dique Cachinche, im Westen Valencias, einsetzen muss, um der Region Trinkwasser zu geben. Dieser Wasserspeicher trocknet aber ab. Nur wenn die Regenzeit bald einsetzt, kann diesem dichtbesiedelten Gebiet Venezuelas eine schwere Krise erspart werden.

Carabobo, mit der Stadt Valencia und mit dem Valenciasee

Und das sah man kommen. Nur die Militärs, die Kubaner und die Boligarchen sahen das nicht ein.

Vor vier Jahren hatte ich schon etwas über das Problem im Valenciagebiet geschrieben.

Native Americans against Chinese in the Amazon

If you speak German, you have to read this article from Spiegel. If you don't, you have to at least get the gist of it by using some machine translation tool.

I'm busy, so I can't explain the whole thing right now. It's about illegal miners, the Chinese and CITIC, interests for gold and diamonds on one side and the native Americans and the environment on the other.

I will later come back and give some details. 

Callyspongia vaginalis

This particularly colourful sponge can be found everywhere in the Caribbean, also along Venezuela's coast (for instance, at the now heavily polluted Morrocoy National Park).

Who gave this name to this species?

Enfin...

The Destruction of the Land of Grace (Barinas chapter)

The National Forest Reserve of Caparo stopped being a natural reserve years ago. This area, of 140 square kilometres, has been largely destroyed since 2004. There is little left there. If you speak Spanish, you can read about it here.

They used to live there, there are very few left now in that area

A little bit of history in a nutshell (but I really recommend you to read the whole article if you read Cervantes' language):

• Established in 1961
• Until the eighties the forest was still kept.
• Between 1982 and 1989 the State allowed the extraction of wood by private and state companies. This was done with less and less control. According to the Universidad de los Andes (ULA), for the year 2000 there was only 49% of the forest left
• In 2001 the new minister for Environment, Osorio, allowed the "control of forest by the communities", which simply meant that the squatters were allowed to run amok. Between 2002 and 2004 70000 hectares of primaeval forests disappeared.
• There are now 14000 hectares left, half of them protected by the ULA and half of them isolated pockets bound to disappear very soon.

The ULA has some proposals to try to rescue what is left...but it has hardly any money. Meanwhile, Venezuelans at large haven't got the slightest clue about what is sustainable development. They are destroying their nature at an ever faster pace.

Lastly this video. One thing that calls my attention is how even the university people basically stress above all the fact THEY are losing the wood resources for research. It seems the loss in biodiversity and the purpose of an actual natural reserve are not very much in their priorities. It is also sad that other people from the state of Barinas and Mérida didn't seem have a voice and didn't come with initiatives to stop this destruction before.

Crime along the Ocamo river

The Venezuelan minister of Interior and Justice, El Aissami, said the government had already contacted 7 out of 9 Yanomami communities in the Amazonas state and they said everything is fine on their side.

This is a pointless statement, to say the least. Those communities are located in an area, as I mentioned in my previous post, a little bit larger than the Netherlands...but with the densest jungle you can imagine. There are virtually no roads there. The two communities we haven't heard anything yet are the ones about which the Yanomami reported the attack.

It's as if someone had reported an attack on Maastricht and authorities located as far as Glasgow would say people have investigated so far in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Haarlem and Middelburg and things are fine there even if Maastricht is still pending.

Those communities are very close to the border. They have never been counted in the Venezuelan census and experts in the area - people I know - are very worried and are sure the attack happened. They just don't know what exactly happened, how many fatalities there were.

This is an area where Alexander von Humboldt had to stop his incredible voyage. It hasn't changed that much since 1800 for the Yanomami or for the Venezuelan authorities, but it has changed a lot for those looking for gold and other riches.

More oil spills in the Land of Grace

Two new oil spills are reported from the Anzoátegui region, where there were a series of pretty bad oil spills in the last few months. We always get to hear about a fraction of the oil spills happening in Venezuela now. Although the state company employs twice as many employees as in the times prior to Chávez, the management has gone down the drain...perhaps some Chavista loonies will say it is all part of a sabotage, but the reality is that the state company PDVSA is letting Venezuelans down. It is simply incompetent.

Here you can read (in Spanish) about those oil spills.

How blind can Venezuelans be on sustainability and environment?

This is really tiring: having to tell this and knowing nothing is going to happen for the foreseeable future...

After our caudillo Chávez said the "intelligence" agency SEBIN and the courts should investigate the opposition for declaring our tap water was highly contaminated someone must have told him millions of people are indeed getting filthy water in their homes. Now, even if the military regime has repeatedly denied there is something wrong with the water, it is asking the Latin American Development Bank 149 million dollars for improving the water cleaning systems.

Now: that's all fine and dandy, the government had to do it, even if it could have instead used the billions it has wasted in Russian weapons. The problem is that the government will do nothing about the source of that pollution. 

The Chávez regime has let uncontrolled urbanization grow around the Valencia Lake and around the water reservoirs everywhere. The Chávez regime has also continued the tradition of allowing companies - private and non private- pour their untreated waste into our rivers and lakes.

Valencia Lake, almost ten years ago: it was incredibly polluted. Now it is just much more so.

Buying foreign machines to clean up stuff at the end of the chain is definitely easier than implementing a plan for closing sources of pollution. Still: if that is the only thing to be done, it is completely unsustainable.

Our caudillo also approved spending over 100 million dollars in the purchase of 2000 vehicles for the military. That's 50 thousand dollars per vehicle. What are those vehicles for? Will the officers be able to take their families to the beach on them? Or at least to the hunting areas Venezuelan military have been able to enjoy since time immemorial? Will they feel more inclined to say "Chávez, presente, siempre presidente"?

Was wird in Venezuela geschehen?

Krebs - wir wissen aber nicht, was für eine Art

KREBS

Präsidentschaftswahlen sind für Oktober angesetzt. Es geht um alles...für die russischen Rüstungsmagnaten, für die Chávez-Bonzen, für den Chávezclan, für die Castro-Regierung, für die Nicaragua-Regierung und so denken auch mehrere Millionen Chávez-Fans, die Gläubigen. Chávez ist krank. Er hat Krebs. Er hatte lange Zeit gesagt, der Krebs sei besiegt worden. Später musste er gestehen, dass ein Tumor wieder erschienen ist. Er musste sich - auf Kuba, selbstverständlich - operieren lassen. Nun unterzieht er sich einer Radiotherapie und das nicht zum ersten Mal. Die Chávez-Bonzen sind nervös, denn sie wissen, dass nur der Führer Chávez - el comandante-presidente, wie sie sagen - die Wahlen gewinnen kann. Ob Chávez eine ernste Krebsart hat oder nicht wissen wir nicht. Wir stellen Hypothesen. Wie Rory Carroll schrieb, sind viele Venezolaner zu Amateuronkologen mutiert.

SCHON WIEDER EIN LANDESVERRÄTER UND DER NACKTE KÖNIG

Der Gouverneur des Ost-Llanos-Bundesstaates Monagas, Briceño, hatte die Reaktion der Regierung auf die Ölpest in seiner Region kritisiert. Die Kritik galt vorwiegend den Militär und ehemaligen Putschist Diosdado Cabello, der zur Zeit Vorsitzender der Nationalversammlung und einer der mächtigsten PSUV-Männer ist, auch wenn er von der Bevölkerung nicht besonders gemocht ist. Dieser liess sich das nicht gefallen und siehe: Briceño wurde von der Sozialistische Einheitspartei Venezuelas ausgeschlossen. Der Gouverneur wollte nicht, dass mit Erdöl verseuchtes Wasser aus einem Damm an die Bevölkerung seiner Region verteilt wurde. Chávez sagte, der Gouverneur sei ein Verräter und das Wasser trinkbar. Er sagte auch, dass der Obergerichtshof - eine Marionette des Caudillos - die Opposition untersuchen musste, weil sie öffentlich sagte, das Wasser nicht nur Monagas, sondern auch anderer Regionen wie Carabobo und Aragua sei stark unrein. Ein Gericht hat prompt reagiert und gesagt, dass es verboten ist, ohne technische Studie zu behaupten, dass das Wasser verseucht ist. Die Staatsanwältin sagte auch das. Das Problem ist, dass es schon seit langem Berichte gibt - u.a. von unseren Universitäten - über die Verseuchung des Wassers in vielen Regionen (siehe zB hier). Diese Verseuchung ist entstanden, weil 1) die Staatsbehörden immer inkompetenter sind, 2) sie in bestimmten Fällen wie im Bundesstaat Carabobo Umleitungen verseuchter Gewässer in Trinkwasserreservoir vorgenommen haben, 3) sie die Entstehung zahlreicher Slums in der Nähe der Wasserspeicher zugelassen haben - sie konnten den unzähligen Obdachlosen der 1999-Katastrophe keine Wohnungen anbieten, sie haben keine Ahnung von Wohnungsbau.

Man braucht nur den Wasserhahn in Valencia oder Maracay zu drehen, um feststellen zu können, dass das Wasser verseucht ist: es hat eine gelbliche Färbung und es stinkt sehr stark. Und dennoch kann man in Twitter Kommentare unzähliger Chávez-Anhänger lesen, die behaupten, alles sei Lug und Trug der Landesverräter. Diese Chávez-Anhänger sind meistens nicht in Valencia oder Maracay, die schweigen nun.

Wie lange kann der König splitternackt herumspazieren?

Solange die Petrodollars reichen, wird keiner es gestehen wollen

In Venezuela solange es Petrodollars für die Militärs und genügend chinesische Kühlschränke und kleine Pseudojobs für Tausende Menschen zu verteilen gibt...in Venezuela solange der Wahlrat ganz klar unter der Kontrolle der Nationalregierung ist. Auch wenn Unzählige die Wahrheit sagen würden, wird die Hälfte der Bevölkerung nicht agieren. Das haben wir schon oft in der Geschichte gesehen.

Chávez ist krank...wie krank er ist: das wissen wir nicht. Er wird zumindest eine Weile nicht viel rumreisen können. Trotztdem wird er Staatsmittel in vollen Zügen benutzen, um seine Botschaften zu übermitteln. Für die deutschen Leser einige Beispiele der Chávez-Aussagen in den letzten Tagen:

Über den Gouverneur Briceño sagte Chávez schon wieder

"das Volk braucht keine Verräter, sondern Patrioten" (Argumente? Nein, danke)

Über eine von der Regierung organisierte Kundgebung:

"dies ist die beste Antwort, das Volk auf der Strasse, die Revolution auf der Strasse, die Volksmacht auf der Strasse, überall...die Verräter sollten lieben weggehen, diese fünfte Kolonne sollte lieber weggehen, wir brauchen sie nicht...sie werden am 7.10 gegen uns nicht können, 10 Millionen Stimmen werden wir den Schwächlingen (escuálidos) und Minderwertigen (majunches) durch die Kehle verschlucken lassen".

MEINE GLASKUGEL

Ich bin kein Zauberer. Dennoch wage ich swieder, einige Prognosen hier zur Verfügung zu stellen.

• April: Die Nationalregierung wird alles unternehmen, um neue Wähler in Regionen wie Yaracuy, Trujillo, Sucre und Portuguesa einschreiben zu lassen, während sie die Registrierungszeiten für junge Leute in Valencia und in anderen von der Opposition dominierten Regionen weiter beschränken will.
• Mai: Angriffe gegen Oppositionskundgebungen in den sekundären Städten werden zunehmen.
• Juni: Der Obergerichtshof wird gegen die Opposition irgendetwas unternehmen. Wieso? Was? Egal, die Chávez-Richter werden immer ein- und auffälliger werden und seltsamere Ausreden erfinden, um Oppositionspolitiker zu neutralisieren. Sie werden wohl nicht wagen, Capriles einfach so aus dem Rennen auszuschliessen. Das ginge zu weit.
• Juli: Chávez wird dann anfangen müssen, die Provinzen zu besuchen. Wenn das Ende Juli nicht geschieht, werden Menschen - auch Chávez-Anhänger- Fragen über seine Überlebenschangen stellen.
• August: Dann wird die Nationalregierung massal chinesische Wagen unter Marktpreis verkaufen - Waren, die durch Darlehen für langfristige, für Venezuela ungünstige Erdölabkommen mit China  erworben wurden. Die Regierung wird zunehmend einige dieser Waren einfach schenken.
• September: Die Chávezjournalisten werden einige Skandale über die Opposition entdeckt haben.

Purges in Venezuela: it starts all over again

Today the Chávez party decided to expel Briceño, the governor of Monagas, a state in the Eastern Llanos with an important lot of oil fields. Briceño is one of the many PSUV honchos who belonged before to the traditional parties. When military caudillo Chávez came to power, he decided to become a "revolutionary" and talk evil about those traditional politicians who had kept Monagas in misery - never mind he was a mayor back then.

The PSUV decided to expel Briceño now because he dared to criticise how the state oil company was dealing with the environmental catastrophe in the Guarapiche River. Briceño was particularly angry at PSUV authorities giving the go-ahead to distribute water from a dam that is still highly contaminated. He rejected specially role Diosdado Cabello played in all that. Cabello, who is now the president of the National Assembly and one of the most powerful men within the military caste, also comes from Monagas and he and his people at the PSUV probably wanted to get rid of Briceño for the next state elections.

I hope the alternative parties just keep a safe distance from all this mess. Briceño is no saint.

Ölpest in Venezuela: schon wieder, nun beim Guanipafluß

 Noch einmal ist eine Pipeline in Venezuela geplatzt, diesmal im Bundesstaat Anzoátegui...eigentlich hat das Problem schon vor zehn Tagen begonnen. Der Guanipafluß ist 320 Km lang und mündet in den Golf von Paria. Betroffen sind vor allem die Kariña-Indianer.

The Chinese are going for gold in our jungles

中国中信集团公司, get use to it

Chávez himself has given a concession for a hugely important gold mine - Las Cristinas - to the Chinese corporation CITIC with shortly before leaving for Cuba to be operated yet again. Las Cristinas is located close to El Dorado, not far from the border with Guyana, in a territory the British invaded in the mid of the XIX century.

Now the Chinese company that is building houses for Venezuelans who apparently can't build houses, the same Chinese company that has become one of the main providers of equipment for oil production, is going to be in charge of getting gold from the territory of the Pemon indians. They just got in time to get that concession from Chávez before that uncertain trip of his.

The military caudillo had expropriated Las Cristinas from Cristallex some time ago. Journalist Bodzin had written a lot about the mine (see for instance, here).

There was no Parima Lake with gold as Spaniards thought, but there is El Dorado and it only hurts and destroys

In 2010 Cristallex had made a strategic partnership with the Resource Subsidiary of China Railway Engineering Corporation, I suppose trying to get a "non imperialist player" on the game. That didn't move forward. The Russian Rusoro also had intentions to go into the business (dating back from 2009), but after yet a new empty declaration of "nationalization of mining resources" in 2011 it pulled out. I say it was an empty declaration because in reality there has been a law since Colonial times stating earth resources belong to the State and can only be given on concession...Rusoro may have really given up because they realised Chávez does "lo que le da la gana". For a time they did have some hope they could exploit Venezuela's most promising gold mine.

I had always a very bad feeling about the work of mining companies in one of the most delicate natural reserves of the world. Stay tuned. The Chinese are in.

Ölpest in Venezuela: Guarapichefluß

Schon wieder gibt es eine Ölpest in Venezuela: eine Pipeline am Guarapichefluß, im Bundesstaat Monagas, ist am 4.11 geplatzt. Seitdem fliesst Erdöl in den Fluß hinein. Dieser Fluß mündet ins Karibische Meer, am Golf von Paria, da wo Kolumbus das Paradies erspäte.

Der Vorsitzende der staatlichen Erdölgesellschaft Venezuelas, PDVSA, Rafael Ramírez, sagte gestern, Arbeiter setzen zur Zeit Sperren ein, um die Verschmutzung in Grenzen zu halten. Wenn ich aber die Fotos sehe, scheinen diese armen Leute oft mit nacktem Oberkörper und wenigen Werkzeugen arbeiten zu müssen. Mehr Fotos könnt Ihr hier und hier und hier sehen. Die Stadt Maturín, über 600000 Einwohner, hat nun wegen der Erdölverschmutzung kaum Wasser.

Vor kurzem gab es andere Unfälle mit Öl in La Pica und Jusepín, in der Nähe von Maturín, auch in Monagas. Die wunderschönen Buriti-Palmen dieser Gebiete sterben jetzt aus.

The Mountain of Life

In the Northwestern part of Amazonas State, not far from the Orinoco, you can visit the Autana mountain or Mountain of Life. The mountain is made up mostly of horizontal sandstone shields, mixed with karst, which is quite a strange thing, as karst shows up mostly in limestone formations.

The Autana rises only 1250 metres above sea level, but it looks pretty impressive as the jungle around is rather flat. This is the beginning of the amazing Guayana shield, which stretches for hundreds and hundreds of kilometres towards the East. To the West and North, going over the Orinoco, you have lands that belong to the Llanos. 

The Piaroas are some of the main native American groups still living in this area. They speak a language that is completely unrelated to any other language but one.

Caracas's really getting hotter

Alexander von Humboldt wrote in the early XIX century about Caracas' benign temperatures. Back then the saying "Caracas has an eternal spring" was already old and von Humboldt mentioned it as a common place back then. That common place was still used in the eighties of the XX century. 

At the end of the XVI century wheat was grown in the Caracas Valley and exported to Cartagena de Indias and other Spanish harbours of the Caribbean where Spanish soldiers wanted to have their daily wheat-based bread and were still not used to our arepas or tamales. Wheat exports were so important that they became the economic motor of central Venezuela for a couple of decades and contributed to secure Caracas' role as main city in the Province of Venezuela.

Wheat exports collapsed in the XVII century due to competition from areas with more favourable climates.  Cocoa and later coffee took over as Venezuelan main exports, but still, people kept growing wheat around Caracas for quite some time, something few Caraquenos would imagine possible now and not only because the whole valley is chock-a-block with cement and metal.

Caracas in 1839

A German by the name of Otto Bürger wrote in the early XX century a book about Venezuela, "Venezuela; ein Führer durch das Land und seine Wirtschaft". The book was published in 1922 and you can find a lot of fascinating data there.

I took from there data on mean temperature for Caracas according to the Cagigal Centre and compared those temperatures to the mean temperatures now. The average yearly temperature in the Cagigal weather centre  in the early part of the XX century was 19.7 C° and it is 23.1C° now. That's quite a difference.

Caracas had about 92200 inhabitants in 1922. Venezuela's capital has over 3, 4 or 5 million people. The numbers vary widely depending on how each person defines Caracas borders.

Anyway: the destruction of forests and increased human activity in the Caracas Valley have undoubtedly been the main factors for the temperature rise. Of course, there is more to it, as the vast majority of scientists will recognise today.

The vast majority of aereal pictures you will see of Caracas online are from areas that were not urban 80 years ago.

Two beautiful whistle blowers

After this post, reporter Steven Bodzin sent us this very beautiful picture of a whistling heron and a Great Blue heron (or something else). The birds were having lunch in the Venezuelan islands of Los Roques. I don't want to promote Los Roques too much because I think there should be less flights to that tiny archipelago and less rubbish pouring in from boats and permanent dwellers. I hope these birds and other species can see less of us...even if we want to see more of them. If you speak Cervantes' language, you can read in El Universal of last month about how Los Roques chokes in human rubbish.

Thanks, Steven.

Wine waterfall

The Cascada del Vino is a waterall in the beautiful national park Dinira, between the states Lara, Trujillo and Portuguesa. This park is really gorgeous, but it is under heavy pressure from humans: there is an increasing amount of squatters in the area, too many tourists and no proper control of what they do as there is hardly any trained staff and few other resources.

One of the things a future Venezuela government needs to undertake, apart from providing for more resources for national parks proper, is to make sure that all urbanizations in the country have more green areas. Right now people in a lot of areas in Venezuela have either cement and pavement or national parks. The latter end up getting too many visitors.

More on environment destruction in the Land of Grace

You must read this interesting article on BBC now. I will later post more details on that.

Let me just tell you something: land use in Venezuela is a complete mess. Nobody really knows who owns what. Most documents are to be found in isolated registries, getting dust. 

Huge extensions are owned by a few, many of which are military honchos. Only the others face expropriations. A lot "state-owned" spaces are run by the military as hunting ground for themselves and their friends. Most farmers have no clue about environment issues. There is no sense of sustainable environment in the country. Environmental laws - in principle very stringent - are only decoration for books.

The Crocodylus intermedius: when Humboldt came to Venezuela, they were abundant. Now they are on the verge of extinction

How to destroy the Land of Grace

I was there. The place really feels like some sort of Paradise, some part of the First Time. No wonder it inspired Doyle's Lost World. Once I was taking some water from a river, the Paují river, and a wonderfully blue humming bird started to fly closer and closer to me. I had to move my head rapidly for it to fly away. It had apparently never seen a human being before. If you have met humming birds before you know how generally shy they are.

This place is close to the Equator, and yet it is not as warm as the surrounding Amazon forest. The reason is that it is located on a huge plateau, the Guyana shield.

This is one of the regions with the highest levels of biodiversity on Earth. If you ever manage to ge to that region, you will soon realise it has some of the most impressive landscapes on Earth.

Well: that place is being destroyed right now. El Paují is a small town to the west of Santa Elena de Wairén, close to the Brazilian border. Pemon Indians and criollos live there. Whereas some people live from tourism, from honey production and from subsistance agriculture, more and more  work in gold extraction. To get the gold they drill holes in the jungle, they change the curse of rivers and they pollute the whole river basins with mercury and other very poisonous chemicals. Because most of them have little education, they sometimes  believe they are doing no harm or if they do believe there is some harm, they think it is only to themselves. They don't see how the mercury destroys life on a long term. They don't have time to follow up the consequences of isolated actions on an ecosystem few really understand. And even if they do realise what they are doing: what else can they do?

Right now there are about 12 "washing machines" along the Paují River.  Each one of those machines gets at least 100 grams of gold a day. 380 Bolívares are paid for every gram right now. Right now nobody wants to work for anything in El Paují but for gold. They are also eager to buy anything visitors bring. And the military, who have several posts around that area, pretend to keep an eye on security and environment protection when in reality they just play along.

If you speak Spanish, you should read Morelia's post on that.