The Culture Ministry of Peru has cut roughly half of the protected area surrounding the Nazca Lines, a move that archaeologists warn could subject the UNESCO World Heritage Site to exploitation from the mining industry.
Created roughly 2,000 years ago, the Nazca Lines are a group of monumental depressions, or geoglyphs, made across some 600 square miles of desert floor outside Lima, the Peruvian capital. Aerial surveys of the Nazca plains since the early 19th century have identified markings that resemble hummingbirds, orcas, monkeys and most recently, a cat—all of which may could become casualties of the battle over Peru’s mineral resources, environmentalists and even former representatives of Peru’s Culture Ministry warn.
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The Nazca Archaeological Reserve has been reduced from approximately 2,162 square miles to 1,235 square miles. Sidney Novoa, the technology director at the nonprofit Amazon Conservation, stated that the area now excluded from the environmental protections was overlapped with roughly 300 concessions—defined here as an area designated by the government for the purpose of extracting minerals from public lands—owned by informal miners in the process of legitimizing their operations. The move comes amid a global surge in the price of precious metals, which in gold-wealthy Peru, has resulted in violent, territorial disputes between official mining entities, informal gold miners, and gangs.
The reduction of the protected area “exposes [the reserve] to a very serious risks and cumulative damage”, Mariano Castro, a former environment minister, told the Guardian. “The ministry of culture is not considering the expansion of hundreds of extractive mining activities that will cumulatively impact the existing sensitive archaeological zones in Nazca.”
In 1994, UNESCO, the cultural arm of the United Nations, designated the Lines and Geoglyphs of Nasca and Palpa, a World Heritage Site “that bears witness to the culture and magical-religious tradition and beliefs.” The site is a huge tourist draw for Peru, and thanks to advancing technology, archaeologists have rapidly added to the world’s inventory of geoglyphs.
In 2019, a team of Japanese researchers from Yamagata University found over 140 geoglyphs at Nazca, including images of lamas, a two-headed snake, birds, and alpacas. A year later, the ministry announced the discovery of a cat etching dating back to 200 B.C.E.–100 B.C.E., making it the oldest known geoglyph in Nazca. In 2022, 168 newly-identified geoglyphs were added by the same team, with four additional finds revealed through a combination of field surveying and artificial intelligence in 2023.
Speaking to national radio on Saturday, Fabricio Valencia, Peru’s culture minister, described the reduction of protections as “an update” that “responds to the need to more accurately reflect the relationship between the geoglyphs and the physical features recorded in the area, ensuring their protection and preservation.”