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He has an elegant stride, with a grace that hypnotizes.
The plumage is impressive: it combines hot pink with whitish and black.
It can measure more than a meter high.
The Andean flamingo—its scientific name is
phoenicoparrus andinus—
nests in colonies during the summer in the shallow wetlands of the Puna and the High Andes of Chile, Bolivia and Argentina.
The area known as the “lithium triangle”.
In Argentina, the rarest of all flamingo species is found mostly in the northern provinces (Salta, Catamarca and Jujuy) during the warmer months and also in the lower areas of the center of the country, mainly Córdoba and Santa Fe. According to the National Mining Secretariat, there are 38 lithium projects in the country, of which 17 are in the large salt flats of the province of Salta.
For some years now, biologists and conservation specialists have been warning about the negative impacts of the exploitation of lithium brines in the places where these animals reproduce and feed.
This species of bird from the flamingo family - in Argentina there are also specimens of the southern flamingo and James's flamingo - was classified as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Drying pits at a lithium mining project in Catamarca (Argentina), in 2021. Anita Pouchard Serra (Bloomberg)
Enrique Derlindati, doctor in Biological Sciences, researcher and teacher at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the National University of Salta, has been researching these birds, their population trends and the threats they face in their environment for years.
And he points to the need to take measures to preserve their survival and reproductive capacity.
“In summer, these species move to the mountain range—especially wetlands and salt flats—above 4,000 meters high.
There they make their nesting colonies, which are increasingly difficult to find and which coincide with the so-called lithium triangle.
The Andean flamingo is a species that is restricted to the Andes and has the smallest population size.
In censuses, it is estimated that there are around 80,000 specimens in all of South America.
They are stopping using historical nesting sites due to the presence of lithium exploration and exploitation fields,” says Derlindati, who has studied flamingos since the 1990s.
These numbers arise from the Sixth simultaneous international census of three species of flamingos in the Southern Cone, carried out by the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (Conicet), together with other socio-environmental research and conservation institutions.
“It is a follow-up and monitoring that is carried out on the population every five years.
In the last 15 years, we began to observe fewer juveniles in natural environments.
That's a big alarm.
Mining companies are being installed in all the salt flats of the Puna;
They are not leaving a single one without intervening.
This restricts nesting possibilities because Andean flamingos look for isolated sites,” adds the specialist.
Derlindati believes that mining activity could be carried out with less environmental impact in Argentina and taking into account the fauna of the places.
“I had the opportunity to be in Chile.
There, for example, the miners do not carry out their tasks during the species' nesting periods, between November and February.
But if the mining companies do not want to stop and the governments do not want to stop, it is difficult to do so.
There are also other ways to extract lithium.
Here it is done with drying basins because it is the most economical;
That requires a transformation of the salt flat system.
The direct impact of the activity is very great,” he assures.
The leg of an Andean flamingo next to the foot of a researcher. Enrique Derlindati
Matías Michelutti is a tour guide in the Ansenuza National Park (Córdoba), which is home to the largest salt lake in South America and 66% of all species of migratory and shorebirds recorded in Argentina, including the Andean flamingos that choose the area. in winter.
He knows the place like the back of his hand: his father was a park ranger and his family navigated its waters for more than 40 years.
“The big problem is water.
The conservation of the sites and the provision of food are subject to environmental conditions and the water levels of the mirrors.
In these years of drought - from 2019 to December of last year - the lagoon shrank to historical levels that were only seen in the 1970s. The number of individuals of the southern flamingo is stable and is not at risk.
But the Andean uses for nesting and feeding the same places where lithium extraction is currently carried out or are favorable for that activity.
The problem is important;
"It is not the extraction of lithium, but the use of water for that process," says Michelutti, who, like Derlindati, is part of the High Andean Flamenco Conservation Group (GCFA), which includes scientists and specialists in conservation and protected areas of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru.
The Ansenuza National Park received that category of protected area in 2022. Michelutti highlights this legal framework for conservation, after long years of research and dissemination work to publicize the enormous wetland of about 8,000 square kilometers located in the center northern Argentina.
“It was a long road and a milestone to become a national park.
Worldwide, the trend is for these environments to dry out.
With tourism, we want the general public to know the importance of these wetlands,” he points out.
Protective measures and stricter regulations to curb environmentally harmful activities appear in the conversation.
In Argentina, there is Law 24,585 on Environmental Protection of Mining Activity that provides a “regulatory framework for protection”;
However, the approval or denial of permits to carry out mining projects depends on each province, which has the power over its resources as indicated in Article 124 of the National Constitution.
“The provinces have the original domain of the natural resources existing in their territory,” the text states.
Derlindati warns that the environmental impacts are compounded by the lack of data from mining companies and the lax - or insufficient - controls by the governments of those provinces.
“In many cases, mining companies do not provide data because the State does not require it.
The economic situation causes them to liquidate natural assets, following a false panacea for the lithium fever.
For example, in Salta, the provincial Legislature seeks to reduce bureaucracy to facilitate mining exploitation.
That makes them lax with permits and restrictions.
The cost always ends up being environmental and having an impact on people's health,” he analyzes.
“The environmental impact study is complete: it includes air, soil, land and social aspects.
What environmentalists say are opinions and not strict data from an official body,” responds Simón Pérez Alsina, president of the Chamber of Mining of Salta, the province with the largest number of lithium projects in the country.
A colony of flamingos in an Andean salt flat. Ossian Lindholm
The official says that the Puna of Argentina is a territory “that has millions of hectares”, with large areas to carry out productive ventures and conserve flora and fauna.
“Any human activity produces an impact.
It is a rule that knows who, for example, built a house.
Technically, there is no proven negative impact of any lithium project.
Neither pollution nor lack of water nor decline in species.
Lithium is the mineral of the energy transition.
Without lithium, we will not decarbonize the world.”
The study
Technical Evidence of the Negative Impact of Lithium Exploitation on the Wetlands and Water Resources of the Salt Flats of the High Andean Puna,
published by the Humedales Foundation with the support of the NGO Wetlands International in 2021, warns of documented and identified impacts, such as salinization of soils and wetlands, contamination of soils with hazardous waste, modification of the natural surface flow of water, alteration of the water balance and impact on native flora and fauna.
The immense salt flats of northern Argentina are not only the “white gold” of lithium.
They are in a fragile environment that, according to the aforementioned study and the voice of other specialists, still does not have an effective environmental monitoring network to quantify the impact.
The challenge is to evaluate the feasibility of developing environmentally sustainable projects that benefit the national energy matrix.
Without taking these elements into account, the large desert landscapes and their water bodies will be irreversibly transformed.
The problem is further aggravated with the arrival of a president like Javier Milei who denies climate change.
Derlindati sums it up with one sentence: “The Puna is a complex and fragile system.
When we start breaking links and putting elements out into the environment, everything starts to go wrong.
And it is difficult to predict the results in the future.”