(Reuters) - Squatters have started raising pigs on the site of Peru’s Nazca lines - the giant designs best seen from an airplane that were mysteriously etched into the desert more than 1,500 years ago.
The squatters have destroyed a Nazca-era cemetery and the 50 shacks they have built border Nazca figures, said Blanca Alva, a director at Peru’s culture ministry.
She said the squatters, the latest in a succession of encroachments over the years into the protected Nazca area, invaded the site during the Easter holidays in April and that Peruvian laws designed to protect the poor and landless have thwarted efforts to remove them.
In Peru, squatters who occupy land for more than a day have the right to a judicial process before eviction, which Alva said can take two to three years.
“The problem is that by then, the site will be destroyed,” she said.
Archaeological News: Pigs and squatters threaten Peru's Nazca lines: