SIXTEEN MILLION YEARS AGO, a volcano erupted over the Yellowstone hotspot near the present-day border of Oregon and Nevada. The blast expelled 1,000 cubic kilometers of rhyolite lava as the land collapsed into a 30-mile-long, keyhole-shaped caldera. Magma, ash, and other sediments entered the keyhole, and for the next million years the clay-rich land rose and reformed like bread dough in a proofing drawer. Water mixed with the clay, bringing to Earth’s surface a swirl of chemical elements like uranium, mercury, and another metal that, when isolated and cut, shines silvery white — lithium.
Today, above ground, the McDermitt Caldera is a remote landscape of rocky outcrops, high-desert plateaus, and meadows of wild rye. As in much of the Great Basin, desert plants fill the “currents, tides, eddies, and embayments” of this “sagebrush ocean,” as writer Stephen Trimble once described it. Lithium rests beneath this dynamic sea.
On the southwest edge of the caldera, in Humboldt County, Nevada, nestled between the Double H Mountains to the south and the Montana range to the north, Thacker Pass rides the crest of a sagebrush wave. The pass is a corridor for herds of migrating pronghorn and mule deer. Overhead, golden eagles hunt for kangaroo rats. Below, greater sage grouse perform their mating dance. In the nearby springs and drainages, an endemic snail called the Kings River pyrg and the imperiled Lahontan cutthroat trout persist on precious water.
Editor’s note: The company has already sold a handful of its onshore oil blocks over the past 10 years, citing the need to cut risk due to community unrest and continued sabotage attacks on its oil installations. These blocks had been snapped up by Nigerian indigenous operators including Seplat Petroleum, Aiteo E&P, First Hydrocarbons and NPDC.
Climate campaigners in Africa and around the world on Friday continued demonstrations against Total, with activists accusing the French oil giant of ecocide, human rights violations, and greenwashing in connection with fossil fuel projects in Uganda.
On the 145th week of Fridays for Future climate strike protests, members of the movement in Uganda global allies drew attention to the harmful effects of fossil fuel development on the environment, ecosystems, communities, and livelihoods.
Friday’s actions followed protests at Total petrol stations in Benin, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Togo, and Uganda on Tuesday—celebrated each year as Africa Day—against the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), now under construction, and the Mozambique Liquefied Natural Gas project.
“Total’s fossil fuel developments pose grave risks to protected environments, water sources, and wetlands in the Great Lakes and East Africa regions,” said Andre Moliro, an activist from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, during Tuesday’s pan-African protests.
“Communities have been raising concerns on the impact of oil extraction on Lake Albert fisheries and the disastrous consequences of an oil spill in Lake Victoria, that would affect millions of people that rely on the two lakes for their livelihoods, watersheds for drinking water, and food production,” he added.
In Uganda, opposing oil development—an expected multi-billion-dollar boon to the landlocked nation’s economy—can be risky business. On Monday, police in Buliisa arrested Ugandan human rights defender Maxwell Atuhura and Italian journalist Federica Marsi.
According to Energy Voice, Atuhura—who works with the African Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO), one of half a dozen NGOs that have pursued legal action against Total—and Marsi were about to meet with local community members when they were apprehended.
Marsi was released Monday and reportedly told to leave the oil region “before bad things happen.” She was briefly rearrested later in the day. Atuhura remains in police custody. The World Organization Against Torture has issued an urgent appeal for intervention in his case.
United Nations special rapporteurs and international human rights groups have previously expressed serious concern over abuses perpetrated against land defenders and journalists in Uganda. Despite the risks, actions against EACOP and the related Tilenga Development Project continue.
“We cannot drink oil. This is why we cannot accept the construction of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline,” Ugandan climate justice activist Vanessa Nakate, founder of the Rise Up Movement, said during the Africa Day action. “It is going to cause massive displacement of people [and the] destruction of ecosystems and wildlife habitats.”
“We have no future in extraction of oil because it only means destroying the livelihoods of the people and the planet,” Nakate added. “It is time to choose people above pipelines. It is time to rise up for the people and the planet.”
If completed, the $3.5 billion, nearly 900-mile EACOP will transport up to 230,000 barrels of crude oil per day from fields in the Lake Albert region of western Uganda through the world’s longest electrically heated pipeline to the Tanzanian port city of Tanga on the Indian Ocean.
In partnership with China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and the Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC), Total is also leading the Tilenga Development Project, which involves the drilling of 400 wells in dozens of locations, including iniside the richly biodiverse Murchison Falls National Park.
Total says the project will “generate a positive net impact on biodiversity,” a claim vehemently rejected by environmentalists.
“Imagine a tropical version of the Alaskan oil pipeline,” environmental author Fred Pearce wrote of EACOP last year. “Only longer. And passing through critical elephant, lion, and chimpanzee habitats and 12 forest reserves, skirting Africa’s largest lake, and crossing more than 200 rivers and thousands of farms before reaching the Indian Ocean—where its version of the Exxon Valdez disaster would pour crude oil into some of Africa’s most biodiverse mangroves and coral reefs.”
Although Total claims it chose the EACOP route to “minimize the number of residents relocated,” local residents and international NGOs say the pipeline’s impact will be anything but minimal.
According toMongabay, more than 12,000 families will be displaced from their ancestral lands to make way for the pipeline, two-thirds of which will pass through agricultural zones. Farmers in the pipeline’s path and the Lake Albert oil region have joined civil society groups and international organizations in voicing their opposition to the EACOP and Tilenga projects.
The #StopEACOP coalition, which is made up of local and international activists and organizations, is attempting to block funding of the project by appealing to banks, investors, and insurance companies. A March open letter signed by more than 250 groups urged 25 commercial banks to not finance the pipeline.
In 2017, WWF Uganda published a report warning that the pipeline “is likely to lead to significant disturbance, fragmentation, and increased poaching within important biodiversity and natural habitats” that are home to species including chimpanzees, elephants, and lions.
Wildlife forced from natural habitats by oil development has in turn caused severe disruptions to farming families.
“We have always had a problem of human-wildlife conflict in this village, but with drilling and road construction across the park, the invasions are more frequent,” Elly Munguryeki, a farmer living just outside Murchison Falls National Park, told South Africa’s Mail & Guardian earlier this month.
“We keep reporting the losses to park authorities but nothing happens,” said Munguryeki. “Each night a herd of buffalo, baboons, and hippos from the park would invade my farm and neighbouring plots and eat our crops until dawn. Whatever they left would be eaten by baboons and wild pigs during the day, forcing us to harvest premature crops.”
A 2020 Oxfam report (pdf) noted the EACOP “will cross poor, rural communities in both Uganda and Tanzania that lack the political and financial capital of the project stakeholders.”
“The lopsided complications of this power dynamic are well-documented in similar extractive industry projects,” the report stated. “Powerful companies are often able to hide their operations behind local contractors and permissive government authorities. Often the only hope that local communities have for remediation or justice is through local government bodies that are often weak, fragile, or captured by corporate and national interests.”
Mary, an Ugandan farmer in Rakai near the Tanzanian border who was interviewed for the report, said that “when this pipeline project came, they promised us too many things. Up to now they have done nothing.”
“What makes me worried is that they took my land but I have not yet been compensated,” she claimed.
A community member from Rujunju village, Kikuube District in Uganda told the report’s authors that “the government and oil companies have not informed us about the negative impact that the EACOP will have on our well-being. All they tell us are good things that the EACOP will bring like roads and jobs. We also want to know the negative impact of the pipeline so that we can make informed decisions.”
Featured image: Arctic polar bear with cubs. (Credit: USFWS)
Contact: Kristen Monsell, (510) 844-7137, kmonsell@biologicaldiversity.org
ANCHORAGE, Alaska— The Biden administration issued a proposed rule today allowing oil companies operating in the Beaufort Sea and Western Arctic to harass polar bears and Pacific walruses when drilling or searching for oil for the next five years.
“It’s maddening to see the Biden administration allowing oil companies to continue their noisy, harmful onslaught on polar bears. Oil in this sensitive habitat should stay in the ground,” said Kristen Monsell, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “President Biden promised bold action to address the climate crisis, yet his administration is proposing to allow business-as-usual oil drilling in the Arctic. Polar bears and walruses could pay a terrible price.”
The Southern Beaufort Sea population is the most imperiled polar bear population in the world. With only about 900 bears remaining, scientists have determined that the survival of every individual bear is vital to the survival and recovery of the population.
The heavy equipment used in seismic exploration and drilling activities can crush polar bears in their dens or scare polar bears out of their dens too early, leaving cubs to die of exposure or abandonment by their mothers. The noise generated by routine operations can disturb essential polar bear behavior and increase their energy output.
Walruses are also incredibly sensitive to human disturbance. Without summer sea ice for resting, walrus mothers and calves have been forced to come ashore, where they are vulnerable to being trampled to death in stampedes when startled by noise.
In addition to seismic exploration, the rule covers construction and operation of roads, pipelines, runways, and other support facilities. It also covers well drilling, drill rig transport, truck and helicopter traffic, and other activities.
The Marine Mammal Protection Act generally prohibits killing, harming or harassing a marine mammal. The statute allows the federal government to authorize certain industrial activities to harm and harass marine mammals, provided such activities will take only a “small number” of animals and have no more than a “negligible impact” on the population.
The proposed rule covers existing and planned activities across a wide swath of Alaska’s Arctic, including 7.9 million acres in the Beaufort Sea, and onshore activities from Point Barrow to the western boundary of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It includes the Willow development project that the Center and allies have challenged in court, and which the Biden administration this week submitted a brief defending.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will be accepting public comment on the proposed rule for 30 days.
The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.7 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
Heavily armed goldminers have launched a series of attacks on the Yanomami community of Palimiú in the northern Amazon.
Hutukara Yanomami Association reports that on May 16, 15 boats full of miners opened fire on the community and hurled tear gas canisters at them. The Yanomami report suffering from burning eyes and choking on the gas.
The attack follows an earlier assault on the same community on May 10, when one Yanomami was wounded, and several miners were injured. Footage filmed by a Yanomami captures the miners opening fire from their boat at a group of Yanomami on the riverbank. Several boats full of miners continued to fire at the Yanomami for the next 30 minutes.
In the chaos of the attack many Yanomami children fled into the forest to hide. Two days later the bodies of two children, aged one and five, were discovered floating in the river where they had drowned.
Eight Yanomami representatives from Palimiú travelled to Boa Vista, the state capital, to denounce the attack and to demand the authorities investigate it. In a press conference held on May 15, they expressed their anger at being abandoned by the state.
Timóteo Palimithëri said: “We are exhausted and barely able to hold out. Please, it’s urgent, don’t you see? The police and FUNAI have to be strong… If the army and police don’t act now many indigenous people will certainly die.”
In a letter to the police, community leaders denounced the terrible impacts of the mining activities: “The goldminers have been here since 2012 and to date, 578 Yanomami have died from poisoning, yet not a single measure has been taken to stop this. They are destroying our rivers, polluting the water, fish and all the animals. We have serious health problems. We can no longer bathe in the river and both adults and children are losing their hair because of the toxic chemicals they pour into the river.”
Since February the community of Palimiú has repeatedly asked the authorities to remove the miners. The miners’ attacks this week were reportedly in response to the refusal by the Yanomami to let them collect fuel, quadbikes and equipment they had left there to supply their illegal mine upstream.
Intercepted audio messages by the miners refer to an armed gang operating in the region
Unless the authorities take decisive action now, criminal gangs and drug traffickers are likely to carry out more violent attacks. Last year miners murdered two Yanomami.
There are an estimated 20,000 goldminers working illegally in the Yanomami territory.
Concerns are growing for the safety of uncontacted Yanomami communities, one of which is in a region where miners are operating: the miners reportedly attacked their community in 2018.
A humanitarian crisis is engulfing the Yanomami, who are already reeling from high rates of malaria (in 2020 the indigenous health department registered 20,000 cases of malaria) and Covid-19, a lethal combination which is devastating their health and ability to feed themselves.
This is graphically illustrated in a photo, taken on April 17, of a severely malnourished Yanomami child suffering from malaria, pneumonia and dehydration.
The government’s genocidal policies and criminal neglect are killing the Yanomami and other indigenous peoples in Brazil. Please support the Yanomami in their protest.
The Brazilian government is planning to open up the land of uncontacted tribes to deadly exploitation, by scrapping the emergency orders that currently protect their territories.
Experts say the plan could drive several uncontacted tribes to extinction, and destroy around 1 million hectares of rainforest – an area twice the size of Delaware.
These tribes are especially vulnerable as their territories are not officially mapped out and protected. Currently the only thing standing between them and well-funded and heavily-armed loggers, ranchers and land-grabbers are the orders (known in Brazil as “Restrições de uso” injunctions).
Seven territories are currently protected by these orders, most of which have to be renewed every few years. Three of them are due to expire between September and December 2021, and are particularly vulnerable.
One of these protects the forest home of the last of the Piripkura tribe – after a series of massacres only three members of this tribe are known to exist, though some studies indicate others may still survive in the depths of the forest. A recent study by Brazilian NGO ISA showed that 962 hectares of forest in the Piripkura territory were razed last year, the equivalent of more than 1,000 football pitches.
President Bolsonaro and allies are targeting these tribes’ territories, which remain vulnerable until they are fully demarcated as indigenous lands. A Senator close to Bolsonaro, for example, is demanding that the Ituna Itatá territory be dramatically reduced in size, while state and federal politicians allied to powerful logging, ranching and agribusiness interests target other territories. President Bolsonaro is highly sympathetic to these deadly land-grabbing efforts, and has explicitly said he wants to open up all indigenous territories for exploitation.
COIAB (the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon), OPI (Human Rights Watch of Isolated and Initial Contact Indigenous Peoples) and Survival – today launched a new video to expose Bolsonaro’s plan. They’re calling for the Brazilian government to renew the Land Protection Orders; evict all invaders; fully protect the territories; and #StopBrazilsGenocide.
Angela Kaxuyana, one of COIAB’s Coordinators, said today: “No more massacres! We won’t allow any more invasions! It’s vital that indigenous peoples and the organizations of the Amazon, and all civil society, mobilize to prevent the territories where the isolated indigenous peoples live from being handed over to loggers, land grabbers, gold miners and other forest predators to destroy. If the Bolsonaro government ends the Land Protection Orders, it will be yet another disaster and attack against the lives of these peoples, which is part of the grand plan to dismantle the indigenous policy in our country.
“We need to prevent more lives from being lost in this (un)government, we’ll carry on defending our rights to life, and those of our relatives who live autonomously in their territories.”
Fabrício Amorim of OPI said: “Land Protection Orders are a cutting-edge tool of public policy in Brazil, which can be deployed quickly to safeguard the lives and land rights of uncontacted indigenous peoples. They’re the highest expression of the precautionary principle, provided for in national and international laws. Doing away with them will mean the extermination of indigenous peoples, or some groups of them, without there even being time to recognize their existence in order to guarantee their rights. It will silence little-known lives and impoverish humanity. Therefore, it’s vital to strengthen these instruments, start demarcating these areas and remove all invaders.”
Elias Bígio, former head of the Uncontacted Tribes unit at Brazil’s Indigenous Affairs Agency FUNAI, said today: “The Piripkura’s land has been occupied by aggressive and violent people who are destroying the environment and threatening everyone.
“The uncontacted Piripkura have shown that they don’t want contact. They don’t have the security of contact with ‘our’ society, given the traumatic relationship they’ve had with the invaders. They’re there in the forest, and they’ve devised strategies to protect themselves and survive. They’ve managed to survive and are there, hidden, restricted to a small territory, and claiming this territory for themselves.”
Sarah Shenker, Coordinator of Survival’s Uncontacted Tribes campaign, said today: “The future of several uncontacted tribes living in territories shielded by emergency Land Protection Orders will be decided this year. They have already experienced land theft and appalling violence and killings at the hands of outsiders. The orders are currently the only thing standing between them and certain death.
“The ranchers’ and politicians’ plot to rip up the orders, steal these lands, and wipe out the uncontacted tribes who live there, is one branch of many in the Bolsonaro government’s genocidal attack on Brazil’s indigenous peoples, and it must be blocked. Over the coming months, uncontacted tribes’ allies in Brazil and around the world will be campaigning non-stop for the orders to be renewed, all invaders evicted, and the forests to be fully protected. Only then can the uncontacted tribes survive and thrive.”
Notes to Editors
– Representatives from COIAB, OPAN, OPI and Survival are available for interview.
– The uncontacted tribal territories currently shielded by the Land Protection Orders are:
Territory | Expiration date | Area in Hectares
Piripkura (Mato Grosso) | 18 Sep 2021 | 243,000
Jacareúba/Katawixi (Amazonas) | 08 Dec 2021 | 647,000
Pirititi (Roraima) | 05 Dec 2021 | 43,000
Ituna Itatá (Pará) | 09 Jan 2022 | 142,000
Tanaru (Rondonia) | 26 Oct 2025 | 8,000
Igarapé Taboca do Alto Tarauacá (Acre) | Until the demarcation process is complete | 287
Kawahiva do Rio Pardo (Mato Grosso) | Until the demarcation process is complete | 412,000
The protection camp at Thacker Pass, Peehee mu’huh, has been in place for more than four months.
This episode is an update starting with a new recording from May 18th, as well as audio from recent video updates recorded on-site by Max Wilbert over the past month or so.
![The Rush For White Gold [Dispatches from Thacker Pass]](https://dgrnewsservice.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2021/06/APrice-ThackerPasssky-1080x675-1.jpg)
