Bolivia's Water People are Suffering After the Lake that Provided For them Dried Up
By Rain Jordan Nov 05, 2022 07:37 AM EDT
(Photo : Photo by AIZAR RALDES/AFP via Getty Images)
A miniature replica of a boat known as a "totora boat" is pictured on a desert at the site of former Lake Poopo, near the village of Punaca Tinta Maria, province of Oruro, Bolivia, on October 15, 2022. - Lake Poopo, once Bolivia's second-largest, has largely disappeared, taking with it a centuries-old culture reliant entirely on its bounty.
Source of Life
Bolivia's Lake Poopo used to be a source of life for the locals, but today, as a result of several things coming together, it is a desert with abandoned boats standing idly on eroded land. Life has been entirely turned upside down for Indigenous tribes who had been farming along its banks and fishing from the waters for more than a century.
Lake Poopo was 12,000 feet above sea level in the high-altitude altiplano region of southwest Bolivia. When the lake was at its largest in 1986, it covered over 1,350 square miles, more than the whole state of Rhode Island.
However, according to data from the European Space Agency, satellite photos have monitored the lake's depletion and reveal that, in 2015, Lake Poopo had "completely evaporated" due to climate change and water withdrawal for local mining and farming.
Suffering Water People
(Photo : Photo by AIZAR RALDES/AFP via Getty Images)
Felix Mauricio, a member of the Uru Murato Indigenous community, shows a miniature replica of a boat known as a "totora boat" on a desert at the site of former Lake Poopo, near the village of Punaca Tinta Maria, province of Oruro, Bolivia, on October 15, 2022. - Lake Poopo, once Bolivia's second-largest, has largely disappeared, taking with it a centuries-old culture reliant entirely on its bounty.
More:
https://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/54033/20221105/bolivias-water-people-are-suffering-after-the-lake-that-provided-for-them-dried-up.htm