I came across this story recently and wanted to include it in my Blog in the hope it will be seen by at least a few more interested parties and maybe something good will come from that.

The Aymara community of Cancosa on the Chilean Altiplano region of Tarapacá, bordering Bolivia, will spare no effort in its struggle to rehabilitate a wetland dried out by the Cerro Colorado Mining Company (CMCC), an affiliate of the Anglo-Australian BHP Billiton company.

Antonio Mamani, a Cancosa leader, describes how the "bofedales" of the Lagunillas river basin, where he swam as a boy and, until recently, grazed his llamas and alpacas have dried out. "Bofedales" are highland marshes, typical wetland ecosystems of the Andean highlands.

In 2005, the Chilean Government Directorate General (DGA) of Water concluded that this ecosystem had been dried out by underground water extraction by the CMCC copper mine.

The wetlands and bofedales, which are fed by surface and underground waters, have been legally protected since 1992. They supply pasture and water for vicuñas, guanacos, llamas and alpacas that are the main livelihood of many Aymara, Quechua and Atacameño indigenous communities.

Cancosa was a community of more than 80 families, comprising some 350 people, but now no more than 10 people remain in the village on the Andes, 13,000 feet above sea level.

Another 20 indigenous people visit the place regularly to look after their livestock and their fields of quínoa, a food crop. All the rest have gone to urban areas in search of jobs and education for their children. But in spite of having separated physically, the community maintains strong links in order to defend part of their land, to which they hope to return.

In 2002, the community noticed that the water level of the lake had fallen, and that the five freshwater watersheds and the bofedal had dried up..

The DGA found in February 2005 that "clear environmental damage had been done to almost the whole of the Lagunillas bofedal."

"The ecosystem's plant species have died off in large sectors of the bofedal, and in others their condition is extremely poor," a DGA report says.

There is legal action in process but that could take up to nine years and these poor people do not have nine years.

BHP Billiton need to correct the damage they have caused.
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