Illegal gold Miners Accused of Destroying a Sacred Mountain in Venezuela

By Robel Ramos

Illegal gold miners have been accused of destroying the top of a sacred mountain in Venezuela. Part of a protected national park in the country, the Cerro Yapacana is being stripped off by unauthorized gold miners. Local government officials of Caracas are also being accused of turning a blind eye as authorities allegedly take a cut.

Rising 4,415 feet above sea level, the sacred mountain – a sandstone butte – is located at the country’s corner of the Amazon rainforest. It is home to various wildlife endemic to the area. The indigenous people in South America know its distinct tabletop shape as the “House of God” or “tepui.”

Heavy machinery is invading this sacred place and ripping into the mineral-rich earth. Illegal miners, armed groups, and state troopers have turned Yapacana National park into the biggest illegal mining site in this part of the Amazon. This illegal activity threatens the rainforest which scientists say is vital to mitigating global change.

William, a former miner who still works in the area said, “They’ve turned the sacred mountain into sand.” He further added that “A tree will never be able to grow there.”

Sacred Mountain- a center for illegal gold miners

The area has long been a center for illegal gold miners. New satellite imagery shows just how heavily embedded illegal mining has become – from the foot of the hills up to the hard-to-reach top of the “tepui.” Affected by these illegal gold miners are approximately more than seven square miles of the park. Two advocacy groups, Amazon Conservation Association (ACA) and SOS Orinoco, employed high-resolution imagery to identify at least 8000

mining camps or parts of machinery at the park’s lowlands. The groups found 425 more camps or pieces of machinery at the top of the tepui.

A senior research specialist of ACA said, “What we typically see is a smattering of dwellings and equipment. But when we zoomed in on Yapacana, it was like… What is this?” A post-analysis of separate satellite imagery confirmed the presence of mining camps and machinery. Finer was stunned by the density of the illegal operations. He further added that he had not seen anything like it in a supposedly protected national park. Finer had studied mining at the Amazon.

“It is the lowest hanging fruit, protecting national parks. If you cannot clean up your national parks, you are really in trouble.”

Analysts and locals are saying that the authorities are letting illegal miners and armed groups operate inside the protected national park. Worse, allegedly, some Venezuelan authorities are benefiting from it.

Guerilla groups exploited the area for gold

For years, guerilla groups from the border in Colombia have exploited the area for gold. After the peace accords in 2016, violence between government forces and rebels has reduced, prompting their presence inside the national park to swell, the International Crisis Group (ICG) reported.

Bram Ebus, a consultant to the ICG, said that one rebel group that did not sign the peace accords – the National Liberation Army controls local justice and taxes residents.

Ebus added that some of the precious metal is given to authorities who fly in on choppers to get their share. SOS Orinoco’s founder, Cristina Vollmer Burelli, said that since 2018 their group has been warning about the destruction and impact of these illegal activities while the rest of the world concentrates on other parts of the Amazon.

President Maduro, who was at the COP27 Climate Conference in Egypt last month, called for the protection of the Amazon. “Millennia of existence have left an irreparable mark on the Amazon. We believe that it is the original peoples who should teach us how to save and how to live with nature.” He points out that great damage is being caused to the rainforest due to capitalism.

He did not, however, mention the role the Venezuelan government is allegedly said to have played by allowing illegal gold extraction.

The head of the National Parks Institute, Hildebrando Arangú, said that the expansion of mining atop the mountain is causing “irreversible damage.”

How these miners are making it to the tepui is unclear. “When I worked there,” Arangú who served the institute from 2004 to 2009 said, “the only way to do it was with the support of the Armed Forces, by helicopters.”

William said that the machines were carried by hand, part by part, by trekking on the mountains for at least 5 hours.

Charles Brewer-Carías, a Venezuelan explorer, identified activity at the top of the mountain in the 80s. During that time, he took a photo of a rare flowering plant, Navia Saxicola. This bromeliad can only be found at the top of the tepui and is probably going to be pushed into extinction.

The demonic poison frog is a small red amphibian that makes it home in the bromeliad and is probably lost forever. Venezuelan herpetologist, Josefa Celsa Señaris said “I wonder if it’s already extinct.” †

Corazon Mining Limited announced that it had initiated the next phase of drilling at its flagship 100%-owned Lynn Lake Nickel-Copper-Cobalt Sulphide Project. The project is located in the province of Manitoba, Canada.

Corazon Mining Limited is an Australian resource company with projects in Australia and Canada. The commodity mix of the company’s projects has put it in a strong position and allowed it to take advantage of the growing demand for metals required for the booming rechargeable battery sector.

In Canada, Corazon has consolidated the entire historical Lynn Lake Nickel Mining Centre in Manitoba. It is the first time Lynn Lake has been under the control of one company since the mine’s closure in 1976. Lynn Lake hosts a large JORC nickel-copper-cobalt resource which has given Corazon a major development opportunity that is becoming increasingly prospective due to recent increases in the value of nickel and cobalt metals. Both metals are also expected to have strong demand outlooks due to their importance for the emerging global electric vehicle industry.

The drilling in Lynn Lake includes an initial priority exploration program comprising six holes for approximately 2000 metres. These holes will test four targets within the Lynn Lake Mining Centre. Additional holes are in the pipeline depending on the results of the initial exploration. Furthermore, a metallurgical drilling program has also been planned to secure samples for further metallurgical test work.

The ongoing geological and resource modelling studies by the Mining Centre indicate that they are a significant number of areas which have not been effectively tested by prior drilling. These studies highlight potential opportunities for discovering additional mineralization and potential resources in and around the existing nickel sulphide deposits and mine infrastructure.

Corazon has previously conducted successful drilling in the Mining Centre with results including 22.6 metres @ 2.30% Ni, 0.82% Cu, 0.068% Co from 24.4 meters, 4.5 metres @ 1.17%Ni, 0.22% Cu, 0.029% Co from 25 metres and 4.1 metres @ 2.09% Ni, 0.57% Cu, 0.073% Co from 26.9 metres. Samples from the metallurgical drilling will primarily be used for ore-upgrade and ore-sorting studies. The bench-scale test work undertaken recently on upgrading the Lynn Lake mineralization has shown promising results. This work is a critical component of Corazon’s strategy to transform Lynn Lake into a long-life, low-cost, nickel sulphide mining operation.

Apart from Lynn Lake, Corazon is also exploring the Miriam Nickel-Copper Sulphide Project (Miriam) in Western Australia and the Mt Gilmore Cobalt-Copper-Gold Sulphide Project (Mt Gilmore) in New South Wales.

Miriam is a highly prospective nickel sulphide exploration project, representing a strategic addition to Corazon’s portfolio of nickel sulphide assets. At the same time, Mt Gilmore focuses on a regionally substantive hydrothermal system with extensive copper, cobalt, silver and gold anomalism. †

By Robel Ramos

Professionals from the globally-renowned Virginia Tech headed by William Hopkins and Robert Bodnar were gathered together recently by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine or NASEM to provide a concise and detailed report on the potential impacts of gold mining in Virginia, USA.

Together with other technical professionals, the two experts in this field were expected to give their thorough and professional opinion on the subject matter as attention to gold mining at both the new and historical sites in Virginia is starting to pick up.

The sudden increase in interest in the gold mines in Virginia prompted lawmakers to pass House Bill 2213 to the Virginia General Assembly, directing the secretary of natural resources, secretary of health and human resources, and the secretary of commerce and trade to put up a team of experts and professionals to study gold mining.

To create a fair committee and to provide credible reports, NASEM sought out people from diverse backgrounds and disciplines. Each member was nominated and selected through a strict process that included an evaluation of any conflicts of interest and a public comment period.

The team of experts, over the course of more than a year, gathered and interpreted information from various sources. This included presentations and discussions with representatives from the mining sector, academia, community, and both state and federal government. Moreover, stakeholders were also heard during town hall meetings and mining site visits in Virginia and South Carolina. The committee to evaluate whether Virginia has appropriate for gold mining. Hopkins, who is the committee chair, said, “Our task as a committee was to evaluate if Virginia has the appropriate regulatory structure to safely start gold mining again.”

Hopkins is also a professor in the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation and at the College of Natural Resources and Environment.

Aside from Hopkins and Bodnar, the committee has other experts and professionals coming from the mining industry, state government, US Geological Survey, and faculties from the University of California Berkeley, Missouri University of Science and Technology, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, Colorado School of Mines, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Michigan Technological University.

Hopkins has been part of similar initiatives in the past. One of the committees that he had served in earlier addressed concerns related to freshwater resources, mining, management of waste from fossil fuel combustion, and research data quality in federal agencies. He also helps state and federal agencies, industry, and other stakeholders related to the environment and its impact. In a report, Hopkins said that the regulations and oversight should be the foundation of state efforts to lessen the impact of gold mining if it were to resume in the state of Virginia.

“But as Virginia’s laws and regulations currently stand, they are not up to the task of minimizing the risks to Virginia’s communities and the environment by ensuring that industry adheres to modern engineering standards and best practices. Our report points to opportunities to strengthen these systems to minimize the risk of harming water resources, ecosystems, and human health.”

Bodnar, on the other hand, is in charge of providing a detailed description of the geological and geochemical characteristics of the gold deposit found in Virginia, and then extrapolating these data points to identify deposits found in other parts of the world with the same features. †

Daniel Turner, founder and executive director of ‘Power the Future’ admonished the Biden administration for “…creating a demand for these materials and then prohibiting American workers from bringing them to the domestic market.”

The Biden administration has often been accused of delaying, if not outright killing, major mining projects in the US. In January 2022 for instance, the Interior Department canceled two leases for proposed copper and nickel mines in Minnesota. Similarly, the Bureau of Land Management only approved 14 mine plans last year as opposed to the 29 mines approved by the Trump administration in 2018. †

As the mining industry continues to evolve and advance in the 21st century, the need for highly trained and skilled Mining equipment operators has become more critical than ever. The opening was for the position of a Cost Accountant and a Senior IT Audit Consultant, as reported on their finance career page. Interns for their Corporate Accounting sector are also welcome to apply if they are pursuing a bachelor’s degree in accounting.

Recently, a Senior Business Analyst position for Komatsu’s subsidiary – Modular Mining Systems Inc. – was also opened on December 18, 2022 for candidates with over three years of experience in the financial planning and analysis sector. Interested applicants can directly apply using the link provided on the company website. †

By Marie Gabrielle Laguna The construction of the UK’s first nuclear fusion site in Nottinghamshire, according to MPs in the county’s former coalfield communities, could replace some of the jobs lost from coal mining.

A national enquiry has been launched to investigate whether job losses in the coal industry have been fully replaced and whether these jobs offer adequate pay and opportunities. A devolution agreement that would grant more power to Nottinghamshire councils has also been mentioned as something that could improve long-term opportunities for people living in former coalfield areas. Since then, studies have shown that people in these former mining areas have a more difficult time finding good jobs than people in other parts of the country. †

As the mining industry is inherently a contract-based one, we find various examples where a single project can put a mining business in jeopardy. This is why mining businesses are always on the lookout for financial experts in specialist job positions.

In the modern mining era, finance jobs are often complemented with computer software to better work on different aspects such as the financial dealings with a contractor, which jobs to place bids for, understanding the impact on finances with subsequent bidding, placing estimates on the Return on Investment (ROI), and planning future financial decisions in a similar and/or better manner. A real-time example of such software is the B2W Software.

Finance-centric professionals in mining can then utilize on-field insights from the software data and detect anomalies in project management, productivity levels, human resources, and material requirements. The faster the detection, the greater the probability that professionals in finance will be able to reduce expenditures. Thus, they can make way for greater revenue overall. †

By Marie Gabrielle Laguna

Under a proposal supported by the Palaszczuk Government’s ‘Invested in Queensland’ program, modern technology will breathe a new lease of life into what was once the world’s largest gold mine thereby creating more than 130 new direct jobs.

Mount Morgan gold mine

Cameron Dick, Treasurer and Minister for Trade and Investment, stated that the Heritage Minerals-led project to revitalize the Mount Morgan gold mine would benefit the local community financially and environmentally.

“Since its proud history as the world’s largest gold mine in the early 1900s, Mount Morgan has been under State Government management for nearly 30 years to remediate legacy environmental and safety risks,” the Treasurer stated.

“Heritage Minerals’ proposal to build a tailings processing plant on the property is a game changer, with the potential to process nearly 10 million tons of existing gold ore tailings and recover an estimated 263,000 ounces of gold and 5,600 tonnes of copper.”

“By re-commercializing the remaining resources, the project would create up to 133 full-time local jobs and generate nearly $40 million in new mining royalties to the state over its first seven years of operation.”

Scott Stewart, Minister of Resources, stated that this is an example of the resources industry continuing to promote good jobs in the region. †