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Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Illegal miners infest Venezuela's Amazon

"We see men in military uniform going upriver, but we can't know who they are," cautioned Ramon Garrido, an independent politician in Autana, a town halfway back to Puerto Ayacucho. "We don't have any proof."
Deforestation is a big concern, with the Venezuelan government's figures showing it has increased to 1,100 square km annually in recent years, an area roughly the size of Rio de Janeiro.
While that is much less than the more than 5,800 square km that was cut down last year in Brazil, Maduro's administration says it aims to plant some 20 million new trees in deforested areas before the end of 2015.
Flying over the rain forest in a small plane, the Amazonas governor, Guarulla, said he hoped those efforts could, bit by bit, fill in the holes torn by the prospectors.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=illegal-miners-infest-venezuelas-am

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