A total of 42 illegal diamond diggers have been sentenced to between eight and 14 months in prison, plus fines, after being caught red-handed near the Gorongosa National Park, a conservation area in central Mozambique, the government said on Monday. Illegal mining in search of various resources such as gold is a problem affecting several areas of the country’s interior, destroying land in a disorganised and unsafe way. In this case, the joint operation of the park’s inspection and the police caught the miners red-handed on 24 June, “illegally extracting mineral resources,” in Nhandzeia, Gorongosa district, a buffer zone of the nature reserve. According to a statement from Gorongosa Park, the miners had previously been verbally warned: “to abandon that location and activity”.
“They promised to leave but did not do
so: they opted to continue and intensify their activity, even acquiring new
machinery,” the park described.
In addition to equipment, “they also
possessed products that were highly toxic and harmful to the environment, which
were used in the mining process.”
“Illegal mining and deforestation are
the main threats to the park’s survival, as they directly affect the rivers”
that run through that protected area. The court also decided that all the
material seized should revert in favour of the state for the conservation area.
The Gorongosa National Park is today one of Mozambique’s main conservation
areas, with a wide variety of wildlife. It is located in Sofala province, at
the southern end of the East African Rift Valley, and covers about 4,000 square
kilometres.
0 comentários:
Post a Comment