True extent of Greenpeace damage to Nazca Lines revealed

LAST week Greenpeace was berated for the damage it did to an ancient cultural site, and now new footage has revealed it is more shocking than originally thought.

LAST week, amid the United Nations’ climate talks in Lima, Peru, members of Greenpeace made a serious pro-sustainability statement. They arranged huge yellow letters to form the message “Time for change! The future is renewable. Greenpeace.” But they did it on the Nazca Lines World Heritage Site, an area that is restricted to preserve delicate, 1,500-year-old drawings of animals in the soil.

The stunt caused so much of an outrage that Peru’s deputy culture minister, Luis Jaime Castillo, is considering seeking extradition of the Greenpeace workers involved, according to the Guardian.

It’s little wonder why with new footage showing the true extent of the damage.

The PBS News Hour worked with the Culture Ministry of Peru to get access to the first drone footage assessing the impact on the Nazca Lines from the air. And ... it doesn’t look great.

From the drone footage you can see where the Greenpeace letters were laid out and where the activists walked. Standard practice is for experts to wear special pads on their shoes when they examine the Lines, sort of like snow shoes, to distribute their weight and avoid leaving marks like Greenpeace did.

Greenpeace activists arrange the letters delivering the message "Time for Change: The Future is Renewable" next to the hummingbird geoglyph in Nazca, Peru. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

Castillo told the News Hour that:

“These things were damaged, they have to be returned to their original status. Some people will have to face criminal charges, because that is unavoidable and the process has already started. ... When you step on [the surface] you simply break the patina and expose the bottom surface. How long does it take for the nature to lift again all that sand and expose again and create the patina? Hundreds of years? Thousands of years? We really don’t know.”

A drone has revealed the true extent of damage caused by Greenpeace activists. Picture: PBS News Hour.

Greenpeace has apologised for the damage it did and said that it won’t use images from the campaign in future promotions.

The ancient Nazca Lines are 1500 years old. Picture: PBS News Hour.

Greenpeace activists walk towards the historic landmark of the hummingbird. Picture: AP / Rodrigo Abd

Members of the National Culture Institute of Peru evaluate damages at the millennia old archaeological site. Picture: AFP / Martin Bernetti

This article originally appeared on Slate and was reproduced with permission.