Peru restores Nazca Lines protection after backlash over mining risk
LIMA, June 8 (Reuters) - Peru's government has abandoned a plan that reduced the size of a protected area around the country's ancient Nazca Lines, it said on Sunday, after criticism the change made them vulnerable to the impact of informal mining operations.
Peru's Culture Ministry in a statement said it was reinstating with immediate effect the protected area covering 5,600 square kilometers (2162.17 square miles), that in late May had been cut back to 3,200 square kilometers. The government said at the time the decision was based on studies that had more precisely demarcated areas with "real patrimonial value".
The remote Nazca region located roughly 400 km (250 miles) south of Lima contains hundreds of pre-Hispanic artifacts and its plateau is famous for the Nazca Lines, where over 800 giant desert etchings of animals, plants and geometric figures were created more than 1,500 years ago. UNESCO declared them a World Heritage site in 1994.
A technical panel of government representatives, archaeologists, academics and members of international organizations, including UNESCO, will work together to build consensus on a future proposal for zoning and land use in the area, the Culture Ministry's statement said.
According to figures from the Peruvian Ministry of Energy and Mines, 362 small-scale gold miners operate in the Nazca district under a program to regularize their status. Authorities have previously conducted operations against illegal mining in the area.
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Reuters
8 hours ago
- Reuters
Peru restores Nazca Lines protection after backlash over mining risk
LIMA, June 8 (Reuters) - Peru's government has abandoned a plan that reduced the size of a protected area around the country's ancient Nazca Lines, it said on Sunday, after criticism the change made them vulnerable to the impact of informal mining operations. Peru's Culture Ministry in a statement said it was reinstating with immediate effect the protected area covering 5,600 square kilometers (2162.17 square miles), that in late May had been cut back to 3,200 square kilometers. The government said at the time the decision was based on studies that had more precisely demarcated areas with "real patrimonial value". The remote Nazca region located roughly 400 km (250 miles) south of Lima contains hundreds of pre-Hispanic artifacts and its plateau is famous for the Nazca Lines, where over 800 giant desert etchings of animals, plants and geometric figures were created more than 1,500 years ago. UNESCO declared them a World Heritage site in 1994. A technical panel of government representatives, archaeologists, academics and members of international organizations, including UNESCO, will work together to build consensus on a future proposal for zoning and land use in the area, the Culture Ministry's statement said. According to figures from the Peruvian Ministry of Energy and Mines, 362 small-scale gold miners operate in the Nazca district under a program to regularize their status. Authorities have previously conducted operations against illegal mining in the area.
South Wales Argus
21 hours ago
- South Wales Argus
Great Wall of Clydach steel fence to be removed says council
The 2.1 metre, or six foot, tall steel fence appeared suddenly and without warning across the face of Gilwern mountain in the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park and close to the boundary of the UNESCO Blaenavon World Heritage site in April. Locals dubbed the 200m long galvanised steel structure with sharp spikes as the 'Great Wall of Clydach' and demanded its removal. Monmouthshire County Council, which said it had to take action to stop people accessing Pwll Du Road that runs across the face of the mountain and has been closed to traffic on safety grounds for the past five years, has now agreed to replace it. An arrow pointing towards the line of the fence along the mountainside. The council has said it will use stock fencing instead and the posts at either end of the road, supporting the fence, will be reduced in height. It will also be painted to blend in with the surrounding countryside. Independent county councillor for Llanelly Hill, Simon Howarth, said he was pleased with the outcome but critical of the council's actions and costs involved. He said at a recent meeting held at Clydach Village Hall the council said it will be going out to tender to remove the fence but costs would be in the region of £20,000. At a public meeting held in April the council confirmed the bill for putting up the fence was £40,000. Cllr Howarth said: 'The fence is coming down. They did say they are going out to tender and the cost is around £20,000, which hasn't gone done very well. We shouldn't have got here.' The fence line running through the middle of the road will be removed and replaced with 1.5m high stock fence while existing posts and embedded gates at either end, that aren't visible and prevent access for vehicles, will be retained. Cllr Howarth added: 'Overall we are where we should have started but around £50,000 to £70,000 worse off.' The councillor said he was also pleased the council has said it will allow access to the backside of the fence, between it and the mountainside, for cyclists and pedestrians though some points still have to be made safe. A close up of the fence that has been out across the Pwll Du Road on Gilwern Mountain. He also said the council will hold talks with farmers and commoners over access for moving stock from the Keeper's Pond end of the mountain road, which he welcomed. A council spokesman said: 'Following a positive meeting, the local community and the council agreed with the proposal to reduce the height of the back line of the palisade fencing, replacing it with stock proof fencing and painting the reveals and pillars with a suitable colour to blend in with the landscape.' The council had said previous measures to keep vehicles off the road including gates and boulders had failed as they had been damaged or removed while a rockfall in 2023 had prompted it to commission a further report which has suggested the road should be closed to people, as well as vehicles. That also outlined alternatives including new footpaths over the top of the mountain, and below the existing road, and rebuilding the road but moving the carriageway further back into the mountain which the council had said would cost millions of pounds.
BBC News
a day ago
- BBC News
Zambia's lost language invented by women but almost killed by colonialism
A wooden hunters' toolbox inscribed with an ancient writing system from Zambia has been making waves on social media."We've grown up being told that Africans didn't know how to read and write," says Samba Yonga, one of the founders of the virtual Women's History Museum of Zambia."But we had our own way of writing and transmitting knowledge that has been completely side-lined and overlooked," she tells the was one of the artefacts that launched an online campaign to highlight women's roles in pre-colonial communities - and revive cultural heritages almost erased by intriguing object is an intricately decorated leather cloak not seen in Zambia for more than 100 years."The artefacts signify a history that matters - and a history that is largely unknown," says Yonga."Our relationship with our cultural heritage has been disrupted and obscured by the colonial experience."It's also shocking just how much the role of women has been deliberately removed." But, says Yonga, "there's a resurgence, a need and a hunger to connect with our cultural heritage - and reclaim who we are, whether through fashion, music or academic studies"."We had our own language of love, of beauty," she says. "We had ways that we took care of our health and our environment. We had prosperity, union, respect, intellect."A total of 50 objects have been posted on social media - alongside information about their significance and purpose that shows that women were often at the heart of a society's belief systems and understanding of the natural images of the objects are presented inside a frame - playing on the idea that a surround can influence how you look at and perceive a picture. In the same way that British colonialism distorted Zambian histories - through the systematic silencing and destruction of local wisdom and Frame project is using social media to push back against the still-common idea that African societies did not have their own knowledge objects were mostly collected during the colonial era and kept in storage in museums all over the world, including Sweden - where the journey for this current social media project began in was visiting the capital, Stockholm, and a friend suggested that she meet Michael Barrett, one of the curators of the National Museums of World Cultures in did - and when he asked her what country she was from, Yonga was surprised to hear him say that the museum had a lot of Zambian artefacts."It really blew my mind, so I asked: 'How come a country that did not have a colonial past in Zambia had so many artefacts from Zambia in its collection?'"In the 19th and early 20th Centuries Swedish explorers, ethnographers and botanists would pay to travel on British ships to Cape Town and then make their way inland by rail and are close to 650 Zambian cultural objects in the museum, collected over the course of a century - as well as about 300 historical photographs. When Yonga and her virtual museum co-founder Mulenga Kapwepwe explored the archives, they were astonished to find the Swedish collectors had travelled far and wide - some of the artefacts come from areas of Zambia that are still remote and hard to collection includes reed fishing baskets, ceremonial masks, pots, a waist belt of cowry shells - and 20 leather cloaks in pristine condition collected during a 1911-1912 are made from the skin of a lechwe antelope by the Batwa men and worn by the women or used by the women to protect their babies from the the fur outside are "geometric patterns, meticulously, delicately and beautifully designed", Yonga are pictures of the women wearing the cloaks, and a 300-page notebook written by the person who brought the cloaks to Sweden - ethnographer Eric Van also drew illustrations showing how the cloaks were designed and took photographs of women wearing the cloaks in different ways."He took great pains to show the cloak being designed, all the angles and the tools that were used, and [the] geography and location of the region where it came from."The Swedish museum had not done any research on the cloaks - and the National Museums Board of Zambia was not even aware they Yonga and Kapwepwe went to find out more from the community in the Bengweulu region in north-east of the country where the cloaks came from."There's no memory of it," says Yonga. "Everybody who held that knowledge of creating that particular textile - that leather cloak - or understood that history was no longer there."So it only existed in this frozen time, in this Swedish museum." One of Yonga's personal favourites in the Frame project is Sona or Tusona, an ancient, sophisticated and now rarely used writing comes from the Chokwe, Luchazi and Luvale people, who live in the borderlands of Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Yonga's own north-western region of patterns were made in the sand, on cloth and on people's bodies. Or carved into furniture, wooden masks used in the Makishi ancestral masquerade - and a wooden box used to store tools when people were out patterns and symbols carry mathematical principles, references to the cosmos, messages about nature and the environment - as well as instructions on community original custodians and teachers of Sona were women - and there are still community elders alive who remember how it are a huge source of knowledge for Yonga's ongoing corroboration of research done on Sona by scholars like Marcus Matthe and Paulus Gerdes."Sona's been one of the most popular social media posts - with people expressing surprise and huge excitement, exclaiming: 'Like, what, what? How is this possible?'"The Queens in Code: Symbols of Women's Power post includes a photograph of a woman from the Tonga community in southern has her hands on a mealie grinder, a stone used to grind grain. Researchers from the Women's History Museum of Zambia discovered during a field trip that the grinding stone was more than just a kitchen belonged only to the woman who used it - it was not passed down to her daughters. Instead, it was placed on her grave as a tombstone out of respect for the contribution the woman had made to the community's food security."What might look like just a grinding stone is in fact a symbol of women's power," Yonga Women's History Museum of Zambia was set up in 2016 to document and archive women's histories and indigenous is conducting research in communities and creating an online archive of items that have been taken out of Zambia."We're trying to put together a jigsaw without even having all the pieces yet - we're on a treasure hunt."A treasure hunt that has changed Yonga's life - in a way that she hopes the Frame social media project will also do for other people."Having a sense of my community and understanding the context of who I am historically, politically, socially, emotionally - that has changed the way I interact in the world."Penny Dale is a freelance journalist, podcast and documentary-maker based in London More BBC stories on Zambia: Grandma with chunky sunglasses becomes unlikely fashion iconHow a mega dam has caused a mega power crisisZambia made education free, now classrooms are crammedThe $5m cash and fake gold that no-one is claiming Go to for more news from the African us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica
