the only miners and a very sour point.!!!

Gold miners in Venezuela are wreaking havoc on the Amazon rain forest, and its inhabitants, because of their destructive mining techniques. These miners are the same ones who were expelled for damaging the Amazon and the Yanomami Indian reservations in the Brazilian state of Roraima in 1990. The central government has been debating methods of enforcing tougher border controls, as well as tougher statutes on the export of gold from Venezuela, however, at present, the state is powerless to intervene.

Upon their expulsion from Roraima State in Brazil in 1990, tens of thousands of gold miners, known as garimpeiros, have descended upon the remote Venezuelan state of Amazonas to continue their destructive mining techniques. As most of Venezuela's proven gold reserves lie near the surface, its extraction is easy and profitable for large scale mining operations. These garimpeiros utilize high power water cannons, connected to nearby rivers, to blast away vast amounts of soil and vegetation. As the soil in the Amazon rain forest is of poor quality, and fragile, the deforestation caused by the miners is, in essence, irreversible. The removed soil is carried away, leaving open pits which are filled with water. The resulting mud holes are a breeding ground for malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Also, the soil which is removed causes increased sedimentary silt build ups which clog the turbines at the Guri Dam on the Caroni River, the nation's main source of hydroelectric power. This has caused the abandonment of plans to further expand the facility. In addition, mercury has been extensively utilized as it aids in the gold amalgamation process. This mercury has turned up in unsafe quantities in the livers of widely-consumed fish, as well as at popular beaches and in the water taps of local residents. An additional difficulty for the Venezuelan government is that once the gold has been mined, it is extremely difficult to track. This is due in large part because the gold is removed from the country somewhere along the country's forested border with her neighbors. The government has placed control over the mining operations on the back shelf, as it has been confronted by a series of economic and banking crises since the beginning of 1995. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that any effective government response to the problem will occur at any time in the foreseeable future.