• Illegal mining continues in the headwaters of the Tuichi River in northwestern Bolivia, with miners encroaching into the strictly protected areas of the Madidi National Park.
• As part of a project backed by La Paz’s government, a road is being built through the middle of the protected area,.
• Madidi’s park rangers are living under constant strain. They are threatened and attacked by miners, and are unable to enter some parts of the protected area to carry out their duties.

In Bolivia’s Madidi National Park, the Andes and the Amazon meet. Their landscapes gaze upon each other, converge and embrace with the full force of their diverse and vast vegetation. This natural wonder continues to resist the invasion of gold miners, who are advancing little by little across rivers and through Indigenous communities, destroying one of the most biodiverse reserves in the world. Illegal mining, the intimidation of park rangers and plans to build a highway through the middle of the park are threatening Madidi’s very existence.

Ruth Alipaz is an Indigenous leader and a representative from Bolivia’s National Coordinating Committee for the Defense of Indigenous Peasant Territories and Protected Areas (CONTIOCAP). She says that people in Madidi no longer live in peace, and blames illegal mining for destroying their lands. She claims that gold extraction is slowly spreading along the reserve’s Amazonian rivers and that the miners are constructing a road that crosses Madidi’s “strict protection” zone.

Alipaz explains that illegal mining is progressing along the Tuichi River, which crosses Madidi’s heartland. She adds that the miners, in collusion with some community members, have driven park rangers out of the area in order to extract gold without resistance. “They seem to be the lords and masters of the territory. They don’t realize that they are killing us little by little and that they are killing one of the most biodiverse reserves in the world,” she says.