Greenpeace 
sorry over 
Nazca lines 
‘damage’

The group added it was willing to accept the consequences.

A senior Peruvian official said on Tuesday that his government would seek criminal charges against Greenpeace activists who allegedly damaged the lines by leaving footprints in the adjacent desert.

Greenpeace said in a statement: “We fully understand that this looks bad. We came across as careless and crass.”

Greenpeace regularly riles governments and corporations it deems environmental scofflaws. Monday’s action was intended to promote clean energy to delegates from 190 countries at the UN climate talks in nearby Lima.

But the group signalled on Wednesday that it recognised it had deeply offended many Peruvians. It added Greenpeace’s executive director, Kumi Naidoo, would travel to Lima this week to apologise. Greenpeace will fully co-operate with any investigation and is “willing to face fair and reasonable consequences”, the statement said.

The Nazca lines are huge figures depicting living creatures, stylised plants and imaginary figures scratched on the surface of the ground between 1,500 and 2,000 years ago. They are believed to have had ritual astronomical functions.

In the stunt at the UN World Heritage site in Peru’s coastal desert, activists laid a message promoting clean energy beside the famed figure of a hummingbird comprised of black rocks on a white background.

Deputy culture minister Luis Jaime Castillo called it a “slap in the face at everything Peruvians consider sacred”.