Cota 1061

By Alex Morales

Nov. 12 (Bloomberg) — Toy helicopters are being used to monitor the health of whales by sampling their breath, a technique developed by scientists to overcome the difficulty of approaching the mammals.

Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse, a wildlife epidemiologist at the Zoological Society of London first used the method in 2006 after trying to capture air exhaled by blue and gray whales through their blowholes, with approaches including reaching out from a boat, using an extended pole and firing self-closing capsules into the cetaceans’ breath, known as “blow.”

“I was thinking of how we could approach the whales and collect a biological sample, a clinically relevant sample,” Acevedo-Whitehouse said yesterday in a telephone interview in London. “That’s when I thought, `why not use a remote-control helicopter?”’

The method is giving scientists access to animals that until now have been hard to obtain biological samples from, with tests limited to stranded, captured and dead whales. The technique will help monitor the health of species that are hard to approach at sea and threatened with extinction.

“They’re very difficult animals to study because they’re elusive and it’s an aquatic environment,” said Mark Simmonds, director of science at the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, a Chippenham, England-based charity. “It is important to learn as much as we can about the health of these animals.”

Whale Mucus

About a quarter of marine mammals, including whales, seals and dolphins, are threatened with extinction, according to the latest Red List of endangered species published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in Switzerland. The blue whale is categorized as “endangered,” the second- highest degree of threat for a species in the wild. Gray whales are listed as “least concern.”

“We want to establish a baseline for what pathogens and what bacteria are out there,” Acevedo-Whitehouse said. “What are the micro-organisms that exist in a healthy free-ranging population?”

Simmonds said the efforts with the toy helicopters will add to work that’s been conducted in the U.K. and elsewhere on dead specimens, some of the carcasses still fresh. He spoke today in a telephone interview from Buckie, Scotland, where he is conducting a census of whales and dolphins.

“The blow from a blue whale is a mixture of water, mucus, bacteria and anything else that’s in its lung,” Simmonds said. “It’s a good approach, and it’ll be nice to see it written up. Still, I’m interested to see how close they have to come. Nothing is totally benign if you’re moving a boat around a whale.”

Mastering Copter Skills

Acevedo-Whitehouse worked with Diane Gendron at Mexico’s Inter-Disciplinary Center of Marine Sciences, or CICIMAR, to track the whales in the Pacific Ocean. Because she couldn’t master the skill of flying a toy helicopter from a moving boat, she said she found someone who could: Agustin Payen, a worker from Mexico’s Federal Electricity Commission who usually uses the toy choppers to monitor power lines.

Petri dishes are strapped to the helicopters and then flown into the whale’s breath, which condenses on the glass. When the helicopter flies back, a lid is placed on the dish and the sample is captured, enabling laboratory tests.

“It’s literally their breath: it’s actually quite potent — these are large animals that have been underwater for some time,” Acevedo-Whitehouse said.

Whales are sampled three times, and environmental control samples are taken without a whale present, the researcher said.

Since testing began, Acevedo-Whitehouse has used choppers to collect about 60 samples from blue and gray whales in the Pacific near the Gulf of California and 40 from pilot whales and bottlenose dolphins in the Mediterranean Sea near Gibraltar.

Pathogens Found

The team has detected some pathogens already, Acevedo- Whitehouse said, declining to name them because she’s planning to publish her findings in a scientific journal. Even so, the findings aren’t enough to establish patterns of illness because years of monitoring are required, she said.

“We can’t really say that animals are sick: finding bacteria or a fungus or a virus doesn’t imply that an animal is sick, it just implies that it’s infected,” she said. “That’s exactly why we need a long-term study so that we can know what’s the common or normal pattern and then once you do that, if you start seeing things that weren’t there normally, you can say `wow, I should be concerned about this.”’

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: November 12, 2008 07:36 EST

Submitted by FAdams on October 21, 2008 - 1:32pm.
Chanhassen Villager

Washington, DC–The Governments of the United States of America and the Republic of Peru have announced an agreement to reduce Peru’s debt payments to the United States by more than $25 million over the next seven years. In return, the Government of Peru has committed these funds to support grants to protect the country’s tropical forests.

Secretary Paulson welcomed the agreement with the Government of Peru under the U.S. Tropical Forest Conservation Act. “This agreement will build on the success of previous U.S. Government debt swaps with Peru and will further the cause of environmental conservation in a country with one of the highest levels of biodiversity on the planet. Such debt-for-nature agreements are a successful model of government and citizen cooperation to improve and expand conservation efforts,” he said.

Peru is one of the most biologically rich countries on earth. Funds generated by the debt-for-nature program will help Peru protect tropical rain forests of the southwestern Amazon Basin and dry forests of the Central Andes. These areas are home to dense concentrations of endemic birds such as the Andean Condor and Parakeet; primates including the Peruvian Yellow-tailed Woolly Monkey and Howler Monkey; other mammals such as the Jaguar, Amazonian Manatee, Giant Otter, Spectacled Bear and Amazon River Dolphin; as well as unique plants. Rivers supplying water to downstream settlements originate in many of these forests, and people living in and around the forests depend on them for their livelihood and survival.

This agreement with Peru was made possible by the innovative Tropical Forest Conservation Act of 1998. It will complement an existing TFCA debt-for-nature program in Peru dating from 2002, a 1997 debt swap under the Enterprise for the Americas Initiative, and the United States-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement, which includes a number of forest protection provisions. With this agreement, Peru will be the largest beneficiary under the Tropical Forest Conservation Act, with more than $35 million generated for conservation.

Washington, DC–The Governments of the United States of America and the Republic of Peru have announced an agreement to reduce Peru’s debt payments to the United States by more than $25 million over the next seven years. In return, the Government of Peru has committed these funds to support grants to protect the country’s tropical forests.

Secretary Paulson welcomed the agreement with the Government of Peru under the U.S. Tropical Forest Conservation Act. “This agreement will build on the success of previous U.S. Government debt swaps with Peru and will further the cause of environmental conservation in a country with one of the highest levels of biodiversity on the planet. Such debt-for-nature agreements are a successful model of government and citizen cooperation to improve and expand conservation efforts,” he said.

Peru is one of the most biologically rich countries on earth. Funds generated by the debt-for-nature program will help Peru protect tropical rain forests of the southwestern Amazon Basin and dry forests of the Central Andes. These areas are home to dense concentrations of endemic birds such as the Andean Condor and Parakeet; primates including the Peruvian Yellow-tailed Woolly Monkey and Howler Monkey; other mammals such as the Jaguar, Amazonian Manatee, Giant Otter, Spectacled Bear and Amazon River Dolphin; as well as unique plants. Rivers supplying water to downstream settlements originate in many of these forests, and people living in and around the forests depend on them for their livelihood and survival.

This agreement with Peru was made possible by the innovative Tropical Forest Conservation Act of 1998. It will complement an existing TFCA debt-for-nature program in Peru dating from 2002, a 1997 debt swap under the Enterprise for the Americas Initiative, and the United States-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement, which includes a number of forest protection provisions. With this agreement, Peru will be the largest beneficiary under the Tropical Forest Conservation Act, with more than $35 million generated for conservation.

03/10/2008

Illegal Logging

Peru plans to create a special task force to safeguard forests and monitor the rivers in the Amazon basin, Environment Minister Antonio Brack has said, EFE reported Thursday quoting Peruvian media.

The environment and the interior ministries have been working together to create the special cell of some 3,000 officers to be known as the Environment Police, the minister told the official Andina news agency.

Brack said illegal logging, “a problem of organized crime, morality and oversight,” has been one problem in the Amazon basin that could not be adequately addressed because of severely understaffed police force.

Overseeing 373,000 sq km of Amazon forest and patrolling the rivers with the existing force of 240 men to combat illegal logging and sale of timber and unauthorised clearing of forest for farming is impossible, he said, adding that the new force would launch an effective campaign against the illegal activities in the region.

Ecologists have expressed great concern over the depletion of Amazon flora and fauna and said that at the present rate of deforestation the basin, home to one of the world’s greatest biodiversity, could be harmed beyond repair in coming decades.

Amazon forest, which generally is exploited by companies looking to harvest precious wood like mahogany, covers almost a third of Peru’s territory.

© Fresh News (India)

By Terry Wade Reuters - Friday, October 3 09:02 pm

Yahoo News UK & Ireland

LIMA (Reuters) - Scientists are using everything from a yellow submarine to weather balloons and special airplanes to solve a climate conundrum: why is Peru getting colder while the rest of the world heats up?

Researchers from Europe, the United States and South America started collecting reams of data this week from clouds, the shoreline and deep underwater to try to figure out the dynamics of the southeastern Pacific.

The area, home to a fifth of the world’s fish stocks, plays a crucial part in global weather patterns and scientists want to discover why temperatures have dropped on the desert coast.

“Peru has a very important role in global climate,” said Alexis Chaigneau, a French scientist leading experiments in Peru. “Over the past 50 years, the Peruvian coast has gotten colder, mainly because of stronger winds that have pulled up the deep cold waters of the ocean current.”

The Humboldt current, which flows north to Peru from the frigid southern waters off Chile, is considered the world’s most productive marine ecosystem, in part because deep cold waters rich in nutrients interact with the sun’s energy to create life.

For the next three months, everything from a small satellite-controlled submarine to cloud-hugging airplanes will feed computers with information on oxygen levels in the water, temperature, salinity, wind speeds and current.

Along the way, they also hope to solve the riddles of the famous El Nino and La Nina weather phenomenon that occur in the southeastern Pacific — the periodic oscillations in surface water temperatures that are linked to floods and droughts.

El Nino has also been blamed for interrupting the upswelling of the current, causing fish stocks to crash in an area where up to 20 percent of the world’s fish are caught.

“We need to know more to understand how this will impact fisheries,” said Hector Soldi, chairman of Peru’s marine biology institute.

(Editing by Pav Jordan and Patrick Markey)

Norway is first country to pledge to fund with $21 billion goal

MSNBC

updated 3:29 p.m. PT, Tues., Sept. 16, 2008
Associated Press

BRASILIA, Brazil - Norway will give Brazil $1 billion by 2015 to preserve the Amazon rain forest, as long as Latin America’s largest nation reduces deforestation, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday.

The promised donation is the first to a new Amazon preservation fund Brazilian officials hope will raise $21 billion to protect nature reserves, to persuade loggers and farmers to stop destroying trees and to finance scientific and technological projects.

“Efforts against deforestation may give us the largest, quickest and cheapest reductions in greenhouse gas emissions,” Stoltenberg told reporters. “Brazilian efforts against deforestation are therefore of vital importance if we shall succeed in our campaign against global warming.”

Amazon trees are felled by loggers or burned in bulk, releasing an estimated 400 million tons of carbon dioxide — 80 percent of Brazil’s greenhouse gases — into the atmosphere every year and making the country one of the world’s top sources of emissions.

Brazil slowed Amazon jungle clearing between 2005 and 2007, but environmentalists worry the trend may now reverse itself, as more trees are cut to make way for cattle ranches and soy plantations that soaring world food prices have made more profitable.

Norway will give Brazil $21 million this year and $210 million next year, but plans to donate the full $1 billion only if “we are able to see a clear documentation that deforestation is being reduced,” Stoltenberg said.

He added that Norway will use Brazil’s annual statistics on deforestation to determine how much money to release, although Norway plans to develop better systems to track deforestation — a task now complicated by clouds that hang over the jungle for much of the year.

Germany and two other unnamed nations also plan to donate to the fund, which Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva created by decree in August, Environment Minister Carlos Minc said. The cash will be key to a new development model for the impoverished Amazon region, which covers nearly 60 percent of Brazil, he added.

The Amazon loses the equivalent of one-and-a-half football fields of forest every minute to logging, ranching and farming, the Brazilian environmental group Imazon has estimated. About 20 percent of the forest, which covers an area larger than Western Europe, has been destroyed.

Going Green
Monday, Aug. 18, 2008

By BRYAN WALSH
Time

Anyone who ever doubted the centrality of oil and natural gas to the global economy should have been convinced by the political events of the past few months. As petroleum prices have risen to record levels, the spiraling price of gasoline has become issue number one in the American Presidential election. That’s prompted Republican candidate John McCain to make expanded offshore oil drilling a focus of his campaign. For years, offshore drilling has been illegal outside parts of the Gulf of Mexico due to environmental concerns, with public support. But that has reversed in recent months, with even green Californians moving in favor of drilling. Barring a sudden national move to adopt alternative fuels, we can expect that reversal to continue — as oil prices rise, so will pressure to “drill here and drill now,” as McCain has put it.

Whatever that means for offshore drilling in the U.S., the real victims of the global thirst for petroleum will be overseas — areas that, until the recent price rise, were too remote and forbidding to be worth drilling. Case in point: the vast, impenetrable western reaches of the Amazon. Touching parts of Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Columbia and Brazil, the western Amazon has remained relatively unscathed compared to the eastern stretches of the rainforest, which have been ravaged by logging. With few roads, the western Amazon has remained so undisturbed that there are still new indigenous tribes living somewhere inside the jungle who have never encountered the outside world.

According to a new report by Matt Finer of the green group Save America’s Forests, however, the western Amazon could be on the brink of an energy bonanza — and that could be bad news for the rich array of plants and wildlife the forest supports. Finer points out that there are approximately 180 separate zones of development for oil and gas exploration in the western Pacific, run by at least 35 multinational energy companies. The area covers almost 700,000 sq. km. and it’s growing fast. In 2003 Peru cut oil and gas royalties in an effort to kick start energy investment; that discount, compounded by the rapidly rising price of oil, sparked a mini-boom in energy exploration. Oil and gas zones now cover some 72% of the Peruvian Amazon, up from a little more than 20% a few years back. The story is much the same in neighboring countries. “Ten new projects were approved last year in Peru alone,” says Finer. “We can see the land being eaten up.” (Hear Finer talk about the ecological implications of the energy rush in this week’s Greencast.)

New oil and gas projects represent a vital source of government revenue for impoverished nations like Peru or Bolivia, but they may come at a high environmental cost. The reason much of the western Amazon remains intact — quite unlike the rainforest to the east — is simply because there are still relatively few roads into the forest. But oil and gas projects will require new roads, and roads destroy forests and damage wildlife habitats. Roads also invite in the most formidable agent of ecological disruption: humans. That means an influx of hunters and loggers, along with the heavy equipment and personnel needed for oil exploration. “Our attention has always been focused on the rainforest in eastern Brazil, because that’s where the road network is,” says Finer. “But the roads being put into the western Amazon have the potential to open up the area.”

There are ways to extract oil and gas without building an extensive network of roads — in fact, Finer points out that the energy company Petrobras plans to use helicopters to transport all personnel and material to and from a site in Yasuni National Park in Ecuador. That move came at the behest of the Ecuadorian government, and it’s representative of the sort of smart energy policies that South American governments will need to follow if the western Amazon isn’t going to be sacrificed for oil. Just as important are the environmental impact assessments that can accurately gauge just how destructive a new oil or gas project might be, not just to the land that’s being drilled, but also to adjacent areas — in Peru, 20 development zones overlap with protected areas. An accident in one zone could easily contaminate neighboring land.

Ultimately, however, the global demand for oil and gas is so great that it is difficult to see any South American country passing up the potential revenue in favor of keeping the Amazon pristine. It’s also a reminder that, as we fight over a little offshore drilling in the U.S., rising energy prices will impact far more vulnerable ecosystems overseas, from the Amazon in South America to the vast Arctic stretches of Siberia. For now, the best we might be able to expect — until alternative fuels make oil and gas unnecessary — is adherence to the best safety standards for new exploration. After all, keeping the oil and gas in the ground may be better for the environment and the climate, but it seems unlikely. In April 2007 Rafael Correa, the President of Ecuador, made a bold proposal: to permanently forgo excavation of the country’s largest untapped oil reserve, located beneath a national park, if the international community would compensate the country for its lost revenue. No one has taken him up on the offer yet.

July 30, 2008

Andhra News

Satellite images have revealed that mountain glaciers in Peru are receding rapidly due to global warming, with 26 per cent of their surface area lost in the last 33 years.

Washington, July 30 : Satellite images have revealed that mountain glaciers in Peru are receding rapidly due to global warming, with 26 per cent of their surface area lost in the last 33 years.

According to a report in ENN (Environmental News Network), the reduction is equivalent to 188 square kilometres of the Cordillera Blanca, the highest tropical mountain chain in the world.

The mountain range is home to more than seven hundreds glaciers, with the glacier Huascaran declared a world heritage site by UNESCO.

Marcos Zapata, head of the glaciology unit at the National Institute of Natural Resources (INRENA), has determined that the glaciers are melting by around 20 metres per year - compared to a rate of nine metres per year recorded until 1977.

“At present, there are more melting glaciers and therefore there is a relative increase in flows in rivers and streams,” said Nelson SantillA�n, a researcher at the INRENA glaciology unit.

According to SantillA�n, while this currently does not have any significant negative effects, people must be warned about the correlation of this with the increased glacier melting and the future halt in water flow.

INRENA estimates this could be as soon as 2020.

“This could have severe consequences since the population and number of agricultural areas near the glaciers is growing at higher rates than three or four decades ago,” said SantillA�n.

Andean scientists have suggested the Paramos ecosystem in the northern Andes as an alternative source of water for communities when the glaciers disappear.

The ecosystem retains and absorbs water in wetland areas.

“The Paramos can act like a big sponge to contain (excess water from) the melting of the glaciers,” said Jorge Recharte, director of the Andes programme at the Mountain Institute in Peru. “If they are conveniently managed they could provide an alternative (source of water),” he added.

A 2002 study by Recharte indicated that the Paramos is a source of drinking water for thirteen million Peruvians who live on the coast.

“Given the difficulty of controlling glacier melting, it is definitely important to work in the conservation of grasslands and high forests located in the upper basins of the Andes to keep some water availability in the coming years,” he said.

ANI

Stack emissions down 74 percent from 1997

Interest Alert

LIMA, Peru, July 24 /PRNewswire/ — Doe Run Peru has announced improvements in the environmental indicators at its metallurgical complex in La Oroya, including a reduction in stack emissions of 74 percent at the end of June compared with October 1997, when DRP took over the complex.

Total emissions of particulate material dropped to 38 micrograms per normal cubic meters (mg/Nm3) vs. the 147 mg/Nm3 emitted in 1997. The maximum permissible limit for this indicator is 100 mg/Nm3.

————————————————————————–
Maximum Permissible Limit October 1997 June 2008
————————————————————————–
100 mg/Nm3 147 mg/Nm3 38 mg/Nm3
————————————————————————–

In the specific case of lead and arsenic reductions were even greater, 87 percent and 93 percent, respectively:

————————————————————————–
Maximum Permissible Limit October 1997 June 2008
————————————————————————–
Lead (Pb) 25 mg/Nm3 38 mg/Nm3 5 mg/Nm3
————————————————————————–
Arsenic (As) 25 mg/Nm3 28 mg/Nm3 2 mg/Nm3
————————————————————————–

These results are part of the process of Doe Run Peru’s progressive environmental improvements at La Oroya, said Jose Mogrovejo, the company’s Vice President of Environmental Affairs. Mogrovejo called the progress a tribute to process improvements that have been put in place, particular attention paid to the issue by the company’s operations team, and to timely implementation of environmental projects designed to control stack emissions, as part of the company’s environmental operating agreement with the state (known by its Spanish acronym PAMA).

Mogrovejo noted, however, that there are still many challenging issues to solve in the future, and the company is committed to putting all the human, technical and financial resources at its disposal towards addressing those challenges.

Mogrovejo added that the start-up of the sulfur acid plant for La Oroya’s lead circuit (which is expected to begin operating in October) as well as the sulfuric acid plant for the copper circuit and its technological renovation (planned for October 2009), will help control emissions from the metallurgical complex’s operations.

About Doe Run Peru

Doe Run Peru is a mining and metals company operating in Peru’s central Andes. The company has run the La Oroya metallurgical complex since 1997 and the Cobriza mine in Huancavelica since 1998, producing high quality refined metals while at the same time working to operate in a socially and environmentally responsible way.

Doe Run Peru

Copyright © 2008, PRNewswire
Copyright © 2008, InterestAlert

From: Reuters
Published July 21, 2008 10:17 AM

Enviromental News Network

By Carlos Tabja

PUCALLPA, Peru (Reuters) - Delia Pacaya grew up in Peru’s Amazon in a nomadic tribe that shunned contact with outsiders, but when loggers invaded the land she fled the virgin rain forest and settled in a tiny village.

Like many others born in the jungle, Pacaya says she felt threatened by loggers, who often cut beyond the reach of police. The result, environmental and human rights groups say, is the destruction of the Amazon and ancient tribal life.

“There were a lot of loggers and we were afraid,” said Pacaya, now in her 20s, speaking Chitonawa and sitting in a three-sided hut, made from palm leaves, where her young son played and chickens pecked at the dirt floor.

Pacaya left her jungle tribe a decade ago and now farms a small plot on the Murunahua nature reserve in Peru’s northeastern region of Ucayali. Most trappings of modern life escape her but some others, like nail polish and T-shirts, do not.

Although experts do not know for sure how many indigenous people have abandoned the rain forest and wound up in towns in recent years, they say former tribe members struggle to adapt and often fall to illnesses that their people had never before been exposed to.

“Uncontacted communities are in a very difficult situation. Most of them are being encroached on by loggers, among others, and their lives are in danger,” said Beatriz Huertas, an anthropologist who often works with AIDESEP, a rights group.

Of more than 100 uncontacted tribes worldwide, more than half are thought to live along the Brazil-Peru border. In May, photographs taken near the border showed two Indian men covered in bright red pigment poised to fire arrows at an aircraft, apparently feeling threatened.

The photos reignited a debate between rights organizations and the government at a time when Peru is encouraging companies to explore for oil and gas in the jungle.

Peru’s state-run energy agency Perupetro recently said it would exclude areas where isolated communities live from an auction of oil and gas lots. It was a sharp turnaround for Perupetro, which had previously cast doubt on the existence of remote jungle tribes.

Rights advocates applaud the move but said Peru must do more to prevent encroachment that threatens to expose tribes to deadly diseases. They say the government’s plans fall short as nomadic tribes travel in and out of protected parks and enforcement is lax.

ILLEGAL LOGGING

Contact with outsiders has historically been disastrous for Peru’s Indians. More than half of the Murunahua tribe died of colds and other illnesses after they were contacted by development workers for the first time in 1996.

An aerial shot of the Murunahua nature reserve shows circular spots of downed trees that scar an otherwise lush, green canopy.

Corruption, inadequate policing, poor local cooperation and rampant rural poverty all encourage illegal logging, said INRENA, the agency charged with protecting Peru’s resources.

The government insists it is doing its best.

“People say Peru isn’t interested in taking care of the tribes … but we are,” said Ronald Ibarra, director of indigenous affairs at the ministry for social development.

Huertas spoke of the dangers to indigenous groups as she stood next to a river that loggers use to move fallen trunks from the jungle to a plant where they are collected, processed and shipped.

Once trees arrive at the yard, it is tough to know where they came from, hindering efforts to combat illegal logging.

A policeman patrolling a processing plant near Pucallpa said both kinds of wood move through the yard, a sprawling complex piled high with cut lumber and mud-covered tractors.

“Some of it’s legal, some of it’s illegal,” he said, declining to give his name.

(Writing by Dana Ford; Editing by Terry Wade and Kieran Murray)

Thomson Financial News

07.20.08, 12:36 PM ET

Forbes

LIMA (Thomson Financial) - Peru scrambled Saturday to prevent potential environmental disaster, after a dump for a major ore mining operation showed signs of a rupture that could lead to contamination of the local water supply.

The Lima government on Friday declared a state of emergency after the dump, located at Coricancha mine and owned and operated by Gold Hawk Resources Inc., showed signs of ground displacement and fragility.

The government warned that by-products from the mining of thousands of tons of lead, zinc, arsenic and other metals and minerals could escape into and pollute the Rimac River, the capital’s main source of water.

Around one third of Peruvians live in and around Lima, a coastal city with a population of between six and seven million people.

The impending disaster could lead to numerous adverse consequences, including disruption of the clean water supply, destruction of a key portion of a major railroad line and disruption of a highway where hundred of vehicles transport food products to Lima every day, officials said.

A government spokesman said he believed the rupture occurred as a result of the facility being overburdened.

Officials fear that the walls of a tailings dump located east of Lima in Huarochiri province might have been weakened by recent ground displacements.

Friday’s decree, issued by Peru’s presidential council of ministers, declared a state of emergency in the District of San Mateo, specifically the Tamboraque hillside near the Coricancha processing plant and tailings area, and called for the relocation of the facilities.

Gold Hawk said in a statement that it was reviewing the decree and had been ‘in consultation with government officials as to the full impact’ of the mandate.

‘We believe this decree will expedite the required authorizations to implement measures that will minimize the risks to people, the environment and property,’ said Kevin Drover, company president and chief executive in a statement.

A Canadian precious and base metals producer based in Vancouver, Gold Hawk has major reserves and resources containing gold, silver, lead, zinc and copper.

The Peruvian mine is operated by a subsidiary, Compania Minera San Juan (Peru) S.A., and has some 450 employees.

Gold Hawk has said it could remove the deposits in some 16 to 20 months.

TFN.newsdesk@thomson.com

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