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    Uncontrolled & Illegal: Ancient rainforests topple and creeks turn into filthy ponds and abandoned dredge pits, strewn with giant roots, enormous burnt trunks and poisoned with cocktails of petro-chemicals and mercury. At depths of greater than three metres lie the gold-bearing gravels. But to get to them a lot of jungle and dirt has to go first. This is an Amerindian mining concessions and it allows these mainly Carib and Awarak peoples to join in on the pillaging of their birth right. But the brunt they bear is often the greatest. The Amerindian miner, unlike others who largely eat imported canned foods, returns to his village to eat contaminated fish caught from rivers polluted by operations like this. Enduring the immediate hazards of these chaotic operations is one thing. Facing the more insidious and deadly threat of mercury is another. Ignorant or not, bio-accumulated mercury IS the ticking time-bomb inside all of them. [Wariquima Amerindian Concession, Jawalla, Upper Mazaruni, Guyana] by: planet_lars Views[1767]     


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