- Across southern Venezuela, Indigenous communities have been drawn into mining for gold as their traditional way of life has been disturbed and they lack other economic opportunities.
- Armed groups and a push for extractives have turned the Imataca Forest Reserve in the state of Bolivar into a mining hotspot, sources tell Mongabay, boosting deforestation and river pollution and destroying the livelihoods of Indigenous Pemón families.
- In Canaima National Park, the collapse of tourism and the COVID-19 pandemic have pushed communities into mining. Many operations in the park are run by Pemón, who own rafts, employ local workers and partner with external financiers providing machinery and fuel in exchange for a share of the gold.
- In theory, Venezuela legally guarantees land rights for Indigenous people and requires consultation on extractive projects, but communities denounce a lack of consultation, with both legal and illegal mining encroaching on their territories.
CÚCUTA, Colombia — When Daniel Romero worked at a river mine in Canaima National Park, in southeastern Venezuela, he would wait until the sun had slipped behind the ancient sandstone tepuis before heading to the raft. Sometimes he thought of his grandparents tending to their conucos — small garden plots — and gliding across mirror-black and amber rivers in dugout canoes.
They had always opposed mines encroaching on their ancestral lands. Romero, a tour guide from the Pemón Indigenous group, who spoke to Mongabay by phone, never imagined he’d end up working in one. Though grueling, he became used to mud-caked skin, roaring machines and his torchlight revealing silt-clouded rivers as he hunted for gold.
Mining for gold, as well as other resources such as coltan and rare earths, has expanded in southern Venezuela since the early 2000s, accelerating over the past decade. It is now rife in areas controlled by state, armed and criminal actors and has drawn in many Indigenous communities seeking to earn a living. It is now spilling into protected areas like Canaima National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and home to Angel Falls, the world’s tallest uninterrupted waterfall at 979 meters (3,212 feet).
A May 2025 World Heritage Watch report based on data from SOS Orinoco found five mining sites and two expansions appeared in the park. Between 2000 and 2023, mined areas grew by more than 1,300%, from 122 hectares (301 acres) to 1,582 hectares (3,909 acres), while another 73 hectares (180 acres) were added in 2024.
Mining has eroded farmland, polluted rivers and fractured Indigenous communities, undermining the traditional ways of life that define the Pemón. While Romero, who chose to use a different name for security concerns, has returned to guiding tourists, many other Pemón in Canaima National Park and elsewhere across southern Venezuela remain tied to the mines, lacking viable alternatives.
“We, the Pemón, are the protectors of nature — it’s a legacy,” Romero says. Yet despite this, he sees mining slowly unraveling the rhythms of daily Pemón life that connect them to the land and to each other.
Mining pressures on Indigenous territories
Romero’s experience reflects a broader pattern across the Guiana Shield, one of the world’s oldest geological formations, spanning Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, French Guyana, Colombia and Brazil. A 2024 report published by organizations from these six nations examined the impact of illegal mining on human rights and biodiversity across the Amazon region. It found that almost all Indigenous groups in southern Venezuela had been affected by the illicit activity.
This includes the Pemón, who consist of three subgroups — Arekuna, Taurepán and Kamarakoto — and call themselves “children of the sun.”
While the Pemón have practiced small-scale mining for centuries, it was traditionally for subsistence and caused minimal harm to the land. Pressure for large-scale extraction has surged over the past two decades, particularly with the creation of the Orinoco Mining Arc. Launched in 2016 by President Nicolás Maduro amid plunging oil revenues and economic mismanagement, the arc covers 12% of Venezuela — roughly the size of Portugal — and was intended to diversify the economy. But despite its “veil of legality,” as International Crisis Group notes, the arc largely operates with weak oversight, with most gold produced outside formal frameworks, driving deforestation, pollution and violence in Indigenous territories.
Cristina Burelli, founder of SOS Orinoco, says the number of mines has increased since the contested 2024 presidential election, when Maduro claimed victory despite controversy around results. Rising gold prices and state-driven urgency — fearing political and economic instability — are fueling the rush, with devastating consequences for Indigenous communities.
“Southern Venezuela is riddled with armed groups controlling large areas, villages and national parks,” Burelli tells Mongabay in a video call. “This is the worst situation that Indigenous communities have faced probably since the conquest,” referring to the Spanish colonization in the 16th century, when Indigenous peoples suffered mass displacement, disease and violence. Mining is also pushing some Indigenous people into the mines.
Imataca: From forest reserve to mining enclave
The effects are especially visible in Imataca, a forest reserve in Bolivar state created in 1961, which is now Venezuela’s most heavily impacted zone from both state-sanctioned and irregular mining. According to a 2025 SOS Orinoco report, Imataca lost at least 4,781 hectares (11,814 acres) of forest between September 2024 and March 2025. Satellite data show a sharp acceleration over the past year. “Before it looked like the forest had been bombed from the air — you’d see pieces of broken jungle,” an SOS Orinoco representative, who is also on the video call with Mongabay but requests to stay anonymous for security reasons, tells Mongabay. “But now it’s as if those pieces are joining together. What was once a forest reserve has effectively become a mining preserve.”
Lisa Henrito, from the Pemón Indigenous group, recalls visiting her grandparents in Imataca as a child, walking along rivers teeming with fish and through emerald forests where her grandfather could identify birds by their song. In certain areas, he would call out the names of the spirits — a practice still observed today — asking permission before passing through to fish or hunt for his grandchildren.
Today, she explains, those rivers run murky, the canopy has become a patchwork of bare earth, and the roar of machinery drowns out the birds. “Our houses, our farms and places to fish have been completely destroyed. Rivers have completely disappeared.” Henrito tells Mongabay on a telephone call. “That whole area is in the hands of armed gangs.”
Mining has threatened traditional food sources and disrupted ecosystems. On some small conucos, where the Pemón grow cassava, maize and red peppers believed to protect against evil spirits, crops wither as a result of water pollution and soil silting, forcing families to rely on purchased food. Meanwhile, hunting to supply mining camps has directly depleted populations of Amazonian tapir (Tapirus terrestris), agouti (Dasyprocta leporina) and other wildlife, while leaving predators such as the harpy eagle (Harpia harpyja) without prey — destabilizing the forest’s ecological balance.
Despite these impacts, Indigenous territories in Venezuela do have legal protections. Olnar Ortiz, lawyer and national coordinator for Indigenous peoples at Foro Penal, an NGO focusing on human rights, says the Constitution and the 2001 Law on Indigenous Peoples and Communities guarantee land rights and require consultation on extractive projects. Yet these rules are often ignored, even under the Mining Arc.
“Even though the Venezuelan state issued a decree, Indigenous peoples were not consulted,” he explains in a video call with Mongabay. Both state-sanctioned and informal operations exploit their territories, so for Ortiz, who is from the Baré Indigenous group, the distinction is irrelevant: “For us Indigenous communities, everything is illegal mining.”
Ortiz notes that while many people reject mining in their territories, some have been drawn into it, fueling disagreements — and even violence — within communities. It’s estimated that at least 6,000 Indigenous people have fled to Colombia since 2019 due to mining-related violence and environmental damage. Others have been displaced to Brazil or within Venezuela.
Henrito has witnessed firsthand the ripple effects leading to displacement: Some relatives left years ago, while others stayed, unwilling to abandon their ancestral lands. Now, even more are considering leaving. “The price we’re paying socially and culturally is far higher than any other,” says Henrito, who served as captain — an elected leader of Maurak, a Pemón village south of Canaima National Park near the border with Brazil — until January 2025. “If you affect one aspect of our world, everything else comes tumbling down.”
Canaima National Park: The next mining frontier
For many Pemón, Canaima National Park, created in 1962, is their ancestral homeland. Stretching more than 30,000 square kilometers (12,000 square miles) through southeastern Venezuela, the park includes the mosaic of forests, savannas of the Gran Sabana, as well as dense western rainforests, tepuis, rivers and waterfalls.
But since the creation of the Orinoco Mining Arc, mining pressures have been spilling over from other areas, including from Imataca. “Young Pemón who learned to mine in Imataca later brought those skills into Canaima,” SOS Orinoco says. The group has identified 129 mining sites within the park, including four between 13 and 18 miles far from the Angel Falls. This excludes sites used by dredging rafts that are difficult to locate as they move around. SOS Orinoco explains that larger rafts also come into southern Venezuela from neighboring Brazil and act as “floating factories” for mining operations, equipped with mining machinery, power plants, solar panels and even Starlink antennas.
Economic needs have largely driven the surge of mining in Canaima National Park. Tourism has long brought visitors to parts of this biodiverse region, most arriving through the town of Canaima. But the economic crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered much of the tourism industry, forcing families to turn to mining.
“It wasn’t just an occasional family member who went to do it; it was a whole town,” Romero tells Mongabay. He spent a few months on a raft mining operation along the Carrao River in Canaima National Park, managing ropes and machinery through wet, muddy nights. “We had no other option. Tourism had died in Canaima, and people started going hungry.”
According to Romero and SOS Orinoco, unlike in Imataca, many Canaima operations are run by Pemón, who own rafts, employ local workers and partner with external financiers providing machinery and fuel in exchange for a share of the gold. Military or state-affiliated actors often collect fees for river access or permits.
Surveys across six municipalities in Amazonas, Bolívar and Delta Amacuro show that for half of Pemón families, the main income comes from government subsidies, donations or remittances — more than half of which is spent on food. Many, including teachers and public employees, turn to mining to survive. Communities also rely on miners passing on the river for essential supplies, trading local products like casabe or cachiri for fuel, soap and clothing.
Mercury: An invisible threat to Indigenous lives
Beyond visible forest and river damage, contamination from mercury — still widely used in gold extraction despite an official ban — imperils communities and ecosystems. Environmental and human rights groups have identified hotspots in the Cuyuní and Upper Caroní basins in southern Bolivar state, with reported health impacts ranging from memory and coordination problems to kidney, digestive and cardiovascular disorders. In 2021, SOS Orinoco found that more than a third of 49 Pemón tested in the Gran Sabana region exceeded the WHO’s safety threshold of 2 micrograms per gram (µg/g) for mercury in hair samples.
Ortiz says the lack of systematic health data obscures the crisis. In August 2025, he submitted a report to the U.N. on mercury contamination of waterways and armed groups moving the metal across borders.
“It’s very difficult to control this whole area because there’s no real oversight. There are only a few places where the Venezuelan state has security checkpoints, but the rest of the territory has none,” Ortiz tells Mongabay.
Efforts to curb unsanctioned mining have been sporadic. Military operations between 2022 and 2024 targeted camps across southern Venezuela, including in Imataca. But many groups brand these efforts as cosmetic — forces often took over the mines themselves or allowed operations to resume in exchange for fees, according to a recent report from the International Crisis Group<.
For Pemón like Romero and Henrito, mining has exacerbated the shift away from traditional practices like farming, hunting and foraging, fraying ties to land and way of life.
“The feeling of being truly Pemón is disappearing. You have to get wet at least once in your life — returning from your conuco through that immense savanna in a rainstorm,” Romero says.
But while mining erodes traditions and damages the environment, in southern Venezuela, many Pemón feel it has become the only viable way to survive amid declining tourism and a collapsed national economy.
“As long as we don’t find other truly sustainable alternatives, mining will unfortunately be the closest option to saving us from some crisis.”
Banner image: Canaima National Park is increasingly threatened by mining, as pressures from the Orinoco Mining Arc are spilling into the area. Image by Catherine Ellis for Mongabay.
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