Venezuela: Caura Advances Plan to stop damage to ecosystems
Thursday, April 29, 2010

April 29, 2010, 8:46 By Pilar Mireles Adalys

Caracas, Apr 29 (Prensa Latina) The Caura Plan, aimed at eradicating illegal mining on the right bank of the Orinoco River in Venezuela today forward, a program that will help stop the devastation of ecosystems in this scenario of high biodiversity.

The program includes the eradication of illicit economic activity that endangers the country's natural resources and the deportation of foreigners involved in the process of extracting gold, diamonds and coltan, very popular in the electronics industry.

Within the strategy to save the area of 500 square kilometers with vast supplies of water, including punitive measures on those who are caught red-handed, and the application of mining restructuring project, which offers employment options in other sectors such as agriculture, along with the destruction of the equipment used for such purposes.

The Minister for Environment, Alejandro Hitcher, told Prensa Latina that behind the illegal extraction of gold and other minerals are transnational mafias and local oligarchies who enslave Indians and peasants, subject to the indiscriminate harvesting machinery of wealth.

Within the mass of workers, he added, there are people from Brazil, Colombia and the Caribbean islands.

The plan also provides for action to reverse the damage caused to the environment, primarily on the vegetation and the basins of the region, among which excel the Caroni, which serves the largest hydroelectric project in the country, and the Caura, the heart a practically virgin place where lush primary forest survives, protected forest reserve figure.

Stop desertification processes in areas where there was a significant loss of forest is a priority, as well as the preservation of streams, endangered by the use of mercury (highly polluting substance) to separate the gold from other metals.

The environment minister stressed that the comprehensive program aims also to create a national mining company responsible for governing the exploitation of gold and other precious metals.

The Caura River Basin in Bolivar state, harbors 17 percent of plant diversity of the nation and 32 species of animals reported in Venezuela.

Along with the offensive in that region, the parliament reviews the system of laws designed to protect the environment in order to salvage relics sites are natives.

Although there is a set of legal provisions aimed at preserving the environment, many of them approved in recent years to revise the text again with a new approach, in keeping with the precepts of the process of change initiated in 1999, said the deputy Manuel Briceño .

The protected area system, he explained, covers about 50 percent of the country, however it requires a reordering of the design for extreme conservation measures in some places of exceptional values.

It is a heritage that belongs to Venezuelans and whose sovereignty we should defend, concluded in statements to Venezolana de Television.

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