Lima (Reuters) Peru's government has left a plan that reduced the size of a protected area around the old Nazca lines of the country, said it on Sunday, after criticism the change made them vulnerable to the impact of informal mining activities.
Peru's culture control in a statement said that it recovered with immediate effect from the protected area of 5,600 square kilometers (2162.17 square miles), which was reduced to 3,200 square kilometers at the end of May. The government said when the decision was based on studies that had more precisely defined areas with “real patrimonial value”.
The remote Nazca area that lies approximately 400 km (250 miles) south of Lima, contains hundreds of pre-Spanish artifacts and the plateau is famous for the Nazca lines, where more than 800 gigantic desert etchings of animals, plants and geometric figures were made 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, according to the Declaration of the Ministry of Culture.
According to figures from the Peruvian Ministry of Energy and Mijnen, 362 small-scale gold miners in the Nazca district are under a program to regularize their status. Authorities have previously carried out operations against illegal mining in the area.
(Reporting by Marco Aquino. Writing by Lucinda Elliott; Edit by Barbara Lewis)
