Simple Solution To The Huge Problem: Story of The Uru Uru Lake Restoration

Can one woman stand against a multibillion industry? Probably not. However, one woman and her team can manage the catastrophic consequences that such an industry causes. She is Dayana Blanco. And this is the story of how she, together with the Uru Uru team, leveraged common knowledge to clean up the mess caused by large oil companies.

Imagine you are living in a small indigenous high-Andean community far away from big cities and their influence. Then, one day, your surroundings, which have been the same for centuries, change over the last few decades. The only scenery you knew and were used to becomes hostile and not promising survival-wise. Not only to people from seven local communities, but in the first place, to animals, plants, and the ecosystem itself.

What would you do? You can try to seek help from local or higher authorities, or you can leave the area seeking safer conditions. Or you can try to fix the situation yourself, as Dayana Blanco (FFN Award winner 2026) and her team did. She is neither a scientist nor someone who could invest huge amounts of money into ecosystem protection. Dayana has used what nature already offered to help save it.

Neverending problems

Uru Uru Lake (Bolivia) is a huge ecosystem for many species. Located high in the mountains at 3,686 m above sea level, it covers 214 km². Uru Uru Lake provides drinking water to locals, their crops, and cattle. It’s also a source of fish for highland communities there. Next to that, Uru Uru Lake attracts tourists and mining companies. Predictably, this gradually led to heavy metal and plastic pollution.

During a cleanup campaign in April 2021, Municipal cleaning company of Oruro, EMAO (Empresa Municipal de Aseo Oruro), reported collecting 168 tonnes of solid waste from the shores of Lake Uru Uru [1]. Imagine this: 168 tonnes of waste is roughly the weight of 120 average cars. And this was only part of the problem. Decades of waste disposal had already left the lake heavily contaminated with toxic metals.

In 2019, researcher Joseline Tapia and her team took sediment cores from Lake Uru Uru and the nearby Cala Cala Lagoon and analysed the layers to see how pollution had changed over time [2]. By studying the chemical composition of the sediments and determining their age, they discovered that mining activities had carried toxic metals, including lead, into Lake Uru Uru, where they gradually built up in the sediment over many years. As a result, the entire ecosystem, along with the communities that depended on it, began to deteriorate rapidly.

It caused not only half of the flamingo population to disappear, but also forced some of the locals to migrate. Partly because of the Uru Uru pollution, the population of the indigenous community of Vito Villachallacollo shrank from 3,000 to 500 people, approximately [3]. This and many other communities rely on the lake’s resources, which are being affected more and more.

These local issues, including plastic and heavy metal pollution, have worsened the environmental crisis at Lake Uru Uru, while climate change has already contributed to severe droughts in the region. According to the Centre for Ecology and Indigenous Peoples (CEPA), Uru Uru’s water levels had been reduced to around 25-30% of its full capacity [4]. The Uru Uru Lake’s state looked quite hopeless.

Throughout the last few years, Uru Uru Lake has grabbed some attention of volunteers and local authorities. Several cleanup campaigns have been organised to remove waste from Lake Uru Uru and its shores [5, 6].

Did the cleanups solve the problem? Not really. Volunteers removed some of the visible waste, but plastic continues to accumulate, and heavy metal pollution persists because сleaning up the trash does not remove it.

Challenge accepted

The condition of Lake Uru Uru needed a long-term, systematic solution rather than a one-time cleanup. Mining and tourism continue to put pressure on the lake, and by the time stricter regulations take place, some species may have already disappeared.

History shows that severe environmental degradation can cause irreversible biodiversity loss. In some lakes throughout the world, native species have disappeared and never returned, even after restoration efforts began.

In the case of Uru Uru Lake, there are approximately 76 bird species, including the endemic Chilean and Andean Flamingos (Phoenicopterus chilensis and Phoenicoparrus andinus), the latter is recognized as a Vulnerable species by the IUCN [9]. All those species may disappear if nobody stands up for the lake.

Driven by a deep connection to the Uru Uru Lake, Dayana Blanco and her team felt a natural responsibility to protect both the ecosystem and the community that depended on it. That’s how the lake got its first strong ongoing advocacy.

In 2019, a group of Indigenous young people from the Vito Urus community decided they could no longer watch Lake Uru Uru disappear. They came together to look for solutions and made a plan to help restore the lake. As more nearby communities joined, the initiative grew into the Uru Uru Team. Today, the group works to reduce pollution, bring back biodiversity, and protect the lake for future generations.

In the Uru Uru team, Dayana Blanco is responsible for planting totora (Schoenoplectus californicus subsp. Tatora) and monitoring the growth of its reeds. Next to that, she organises volunteers to protect reeds from cattle and illegal settlers.

Why totora?

It turns out that this native plant can reduce the concentration of metal ions in the water. By planting 6,000 totora reeds, the Uru Uru Team has already helped to restore 10 kilometres of the lake’s shoreline.

The idea behind the solution was not entirely new. As early as 1982, Bolivian researchers had documented totora’s ability to help purify contaminated water by absorbing heavy metals. Decades later, the Uru Uru Team used this concept to purify the water of Uru Uru Lake.

And the effort paid off. Tests showed that totora helped reduce pollution by about 30% [10]. Flamingos and other water birds are returning to the lake, and cleaner water is improving the lives of more than 100 local families and their livestock. The Uru Uru team’s efforts helped protect hundreds of thousands of hectares of agricultural land, wetlands, and Indigenous territories connected to the lake ecosystem.

The Uru Uru Team’s work goes beyond restoring the environment. From the start, the organisation has focused on helping Indigenous women take on bigger roles in their communities. More than 500 women helped run community gardens that funded restoration work, took part in decisions about lake recovery, and led campaigns against lake pollution.

This is proof of how everything in the biosphere is connected. And because people are part of it too, their lives changed as well. One clear goal brought the whole community together, and the problem started being solved locally. No major investments, no strong government support. Just people determined to protect the lake they depend on, driven by something close to a survival instinct.

A surprisingly simple solution

People did not first discover the mechanism on a cellular level and then start using totora. It was the opposite. Communities in Bolivia and Peru had long observed that totora thrived in wetlands, sewage lagoons, and polluted waters, while also helping improve water quality. Because of these observations, environmental specialists began using totora in experimental wastewater-treatment systems by at least the early 1990s [7]. Only later scientific studies investigated exactly how the plant absorbed and stored contaminants.

At the cellular level, totora roots take up water and dissolved substances from their surroundings. Heavy metal ions such as lead, cadmium, and arsenic can enter the root cells through the same transport systems that plants normally use to absorb nutrients. Once inside, the plant stores many of these metals in its cells, reducing their concentration in the water [8].

The metals do not disappear. They are transferred from the water into the plant. To permanently remove them from the ecosystem, the contaminated plant usually needs to be disposed of safely. Otherwise, some of the metals can return to the environment when the plant dies and decomposes.

Knowing that totora can absorb heavy metals from contaminated water, the Uru Uru Team decided to use it to help clean the lake. So, how did it go?

The Uru Uru’s team method of planting totota is actually quite clever and fairly simple. They do not just plant totora directly into polluted water and hope for the best. They use floating rafts (“balsas flotantes”), inspired by the floating islands and boats traditionally built by the Urus people centuries ago.

The process works roughly like this:

• They build floating rafts from recycled materials, including plastic waste collected from the lake;
• Young totora plants are placed on these rafts. The rafts act like floating plant pots, helping seedlings survive in deeper water;
• They also transplant existing aquatic plants from dry or degraded areas to places where water is still present;
• As the totora grows, its roots extend into the water, where they absorb and trap heavy metals. The expanding reed beds also create habitat for wildlife.

And more than that, over time, these restored patches become self-sustaining and continue helping the lake recover on their own.

Can it help other ecosystems?

The idea doesn’t only work for Lake Uru Uru. The method is cheap, simple, and uses materials that many communities already have. That’s why other mining-affected communities are already looking at how they can apply this “totora approach” to restore their own lakes.

Seeing a lake covered in plastic and knowing that its waters are also contaminated with invisible heavy metals is something most people would give up on. Such a sight would leave many feeling hopeless. But there are always a few people who turn concern into action. What seems difficult or even impossible to others becomes a challenge for them. For the Uru Uru Team, restoring the lake was not just an ambition, but about surviving inside the ecosystem. So they decided to do something about it. And it helped.

May this story encourage everyone who is just one or two steps away from taking action. If you try, things are unlikely to get worse. And if you do, chances are you’ll find other like-minded people willing to support you. Sometimes all it takes is one person deciding to act. And because of that decision, a species, an ecosystem, or an entire community may get a chance to survive.