Goldman Prize Winner Murrawah Maroochy Johnson talks climate justice and inheriting a legacy of Indigenous resistance.
In 2019, Australia was on the cusp of approving a new coal mine on traditional Wirdi land in Queensland that would have extracted approximately 40 million tons of coal each year for 35 years. The Waratah coal mine would have destroyed a nature refuge and emitted 1.58 billion tons of carbon dioxide.
But that didn’t happen, thanks to the advocacy of Murrawah Maroochy Johnson, a 29-year-old Wirdi woman of the Birri Gubba Nation, who led a lawsuit against the coal company in 2021, and won.
The case was groundbreaking in many ways, but perhaps most strikingly, Johnson’s work helped set a new legal precedent that pushed members of the court to travel to where First Nations people lived in order hear their testimonies and perspectives, instead of expecting Indigenous people to travel long distances to settler courts. The lawsuit was also the first to successfully use Queensland’s new human rights law to challenge coal mining, arguing that greenhouse gas emissions from the Waratah coal mine would harm Indigenous peoples and their cultural traditions. Because of the litigation, the mine’s permit was denied in 2022, and its appeal failed last year.
Because of her work, Johnson is now among several of this year’s winners of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize honoring global grassroots environmental activism.
The last few years have been transformative for Johnson, who is the mother of a toddler and expecting her second baby in a few weeks. Grist spoke with her to learn about what motivates her, how she views the climate crisis, and what other young Indigenous activists can learn from her work.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q. You have been working on behalf of your people since you were 19 years old. What drives you to do this work?
A. It’s definitely not a choice. First contact here was just 235 years ago. At that point, terra nullius was declared, which said that the land belonged to nobody, which essentially means that the first interaction with colonizing invading powers was one of dehumanization. They saw us here, but to say that the land belonged to no one really says that we are subhuman. They deemed us of a status where we couldn’t own our own land even though they saw us here inhabiting our own lands, living and thriving. And so there’s a long legacy of resistance in first contact frontier wars but also through advocacy over the generations. I’m just a young person who gets to inherit that great legacy.
I was raised by very strong parents. My father, my grandfather, my great grandparents, were all resistance fighters. There’s a lot of responsibility that comes with inheriting that legacy and feeling like you need to do your part. But also, I feel like it’s not a choice because at the end of the day, what’s real is our people, our law, our custom — no matter the colonial apparatus attempts to disappear us, dilute us, absorb us into homogenous Australian mainstream and complete the assimilation process. To me, that’s continued injustice that our people face. And every First Nations person, I feel, every Indigenous person, has an obligation to resist that as well. Because at the end of the day, we First Nations people here in Australia, we are the oldest continuous living culture on the planet, and what comes with that is the fact that we have the oldest living creation stories, we have the oldest living law and custom. That in and of itself is so significant that we can’t just allow it to be washed away. I think that there has to be a continued active effort, by my generation and all future generations, to maintain our ways.
For us, colonial, Western, white contact is just such a small blip in time for how long our people have been here and how long we’ve maintained our ways and law and custom and culture. We have to collectively acknowledge that we have a duty of care and responsibility to maintain the way of our people. I’m really proud of being able to inherit that and also having a responsibility to protect and maintain it.
Q. Can you tell me about your perspective on climate change?
A. It’s always called human-induced climate change, but I think that that term doesn’t allow for colonial powers to be held accountable, or big polluters. I think it’s actually more accurate to say that it’s colonial-induced climate change, because it’s actually the process of colonization violently extracting and exploiting the resources of Indigenous nations, peoples’ land, especially in the Global South, that’s resulted in the crisis of climate change that we face today.
I see climate change not just as a crisis, but also an opportunity. In one sense, if what remains of our cultural knowledge is so intimately dependent on our land, and having access to our lands and waters, then climate change is a huge threat. For example, in the Torres Strait and throughout the Pacific, what do you actually do when your country, your homelands, your territory disappears because of the impacts of climate change? What does that mean for our identity that actually derives from being the people of that unique country and that unique place? Climate change could really signal finality of our diverse and distinct and unique cultural identities as Indigenous and First Nations people in the sense that land may become so changed or so disappeared that our people are no longer able to resonate or recognize or identify with it anymore or learn from it anymore. So that’s really scary.
But I think the other side is an opportunity because climate change creates a sense of urgency. It’s that sense of urgency that is going to be pushing our peoples to work collectively as Indigenous and First Nations people around the world, to highlight the importance of the shift required to address climate change, but also to recenter our traditional systems of caring for country and sustainability and living in harmony with the land as a solution to climate change — really combat this normalization of colonial history and the global system and power systems as unquestionable.
Q. That reminds me of how, on the video announcing your Goldman Prize, you mentioned that “there’s a lot to be learned from our ways of being.” Can you expand on that idea?
A. We’re at this moment where we can really take the best of our traditional ways of being and really use that to influence the decisions that we make about our future. What real climate justice is, to me, is really drawing on the greatest strengths that we have in terms of our traditional law and custom, using that as a guidance system in terms of the decisions we make about what the future looks like.
If you’re going to shift the entire global economy and global structure of how business is done, then you want to be talking to the experts. So you want to be talking to First Nations people and knowledge holders. I think climate change will ultimately lead those who are committed to the current system to be forced to be exposed to the reality that a lot of First Nations people have been living with for a long time: that this current global system doesn’t work for us. In the context of capitalism, it’s designed to work against us and facilitate outcomes for very few.
Climate change is here because of the current global systems, and that means that, eventually, the system will become obsolete. It already is when it comes to the survival of humanity. I think that ultimately people will come to see that the system doesn’t work for them. It’s never been designed to work for the masses.
So, I really see a huge shift toward leadership from First Nations people. Indigenous or non-Indigenous, people — this is my hope here in Australia — start to act in accordance with traditional principles of caring for country law and custom and really reestablishing old ways, governing ways, of these lands. I think that’s the only way to really address climate change. And maybe I’ve got a huge imagination, but I see it as part of my responsibility to work as hard as I can toward that goal of creating that reality, one in which a modern society essentially adheres to First Nations law and custom in a modern context.
Q. You’ve talked a lot about the importance of drawing from traditional knowledge. When I think about what it means to be Indigenous, I think about both the knowledge we have and also the challenge in bringing that forward because of how colonialism has eroded our ties to both culture and land. What would you say to Indigenous people who care about land and culture, but are feeling disconnected from both? How do they find their way back?
A. This is one that I actually really struggle with sometimes because in the Australian context here, we had the Stolen Generation, when Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their parents and indoctrinated. So you have whole generations that have been dispossessed of their cultural inheritance, of their families, and also their peoples have been dispossessed of future generations as well. The colonial process was a finely tuned machine by the time it came through the South Pacific and Australia. In one sense, we’re fortunate that it was only just over 230 years ago first contact happened, but at the same time, this colonial apparatus was so finely tuned that they didn’t need as long to do as much damage as they’ve been able to do.
Being in a settler colony, we’re dealing with mass incarceration, mass suicide rates, and the disappearing of our people. It feels like it’s hard to catch up. We can’t take a break or catch our breath because we’re dealing with the very real, frontier issues of losing our people. But at the same time, what’s required for healing and to actually rebuild our cultural strength is time. And actually being able to take the time to be on country, to sit with country, to learn, and to reconnect.
It’s this really delicate tug of war that all First Peoples who have been subject to colonialism have to face, and we have to sort of grapple with on a daily basis, what do we put our energy into? Am I fighting forced child removals and assimilation on the daily? Am I fighting the education system? Am I doing land and country work and going through the legal system? Or am I just sort of operating as an individual, sovereign person, under our own law and custom and that’s how I resist and maintain my strength? It’s so vast in terms of how we have to split ourselves up in a way to deal with the issues at hand, which essentially is the disappearance of our people, but also our way of life and custom.
At the end of the day, for me, I just have to take heed from my ancestors and my own people that we’ve seen the end of the world before. My great grandparents and their generation saw the end of their world already, and they’ve been fighting. They were in the physical frontier on the front line, and survived that, and saw everything that they knew to be ripped away from them. So I have to just acknowledge that I’m very lucky to be born in the generation I’m born in, with so much more opportunity. But at the same time, there is that huge gap in familiarity with culture and our ways.
Q. Before your successful litigation against the Warratah mine, you fought against the Carmichael mine, filing lawsuit after lawsuit. But the mine still opened in 2021 and is now in operation. How do you handle such setbacks, and the grief of climate trauma and colonialism? What would you say to other Indigenous activists who are dealing with similar challenges?
A. Being a young person, going through that, it’s really hard. You’re up against the actual powers that be of the colonial apparatus: the state government, the federal government, the mining lobby itself, and this idea that our traditional lands should be destroyed for extraction and exploitation for the benefit of everybody else. For the benefit of the state in terms of royalties, and for the benefit of the rest of settler Australia, where we, the people and our lands, are the collateral damage. And so for a long time I was very heartbroken, very depressed. For a long time I didn’t know what my next steps were.
But the reality is that I feel very much so guarded by my ancestors and all our people. I had time to mourn and get back on my feet before the opportunity to join the Youth Verdict case against the Waratah coal mine came along.
All I can say is we kept going. We’re fighting for our people, every single day. And something that I was always reminded of along the way was that even though it might not be the silver bullet that makes significant change, it’s still important that we create our own legacy of resistance and that we do our best every day to maintain what we hold dear.
We’ve got to do the work because we’ve got to do the work. It stands on its own and it’s our obligation as traditional custodians every day to do the work of maintaining and protecting country. We put on the record that we don’t consent, this isn’t free, prior, and informed consent as we are entitled under the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And every step of the way, just maintaining that resistance, even if it’s just telling our story and challenging the prevailing, dominant, colonial narrative, I think is important to do every single day.
So in terms of advice, I think it’s to keep going. Take a break when you need to. And have a cry, because I cried for like eight years straight, but I think just knowing what some of my own people have been through and the horrors that they had to deal with, it’s the responsibility that we inherit to maintain the fight and continue on as best we can.
We might not be able to solve everything in one or two generations. But again, we’re the oldest living culture on the face of the earth. So, in that respect, we’ve been here the longest and, as long as my generation and our future generations maintain our own identities, cultural identities, and resistance as best as we can, we’ll be here long into the future as well.
SITIO DALICNO, Philippines — Domeng Laita, 64, stands on a mountain ledge outside his home, looking down with worry on his face. Below him stands the embankment of the San Roque dam, stretching more than a kilometer (0.6 miles) along the Agno River. In 2012, a spill from a gold mine upstream sent millions of tons of waste into the river system. With a looming increase in mining activity, Laita says he dreads a repeat of the incident.
Laita looks back at his home, casting another shrug then grinding his teeth. More mining means the old tunnels under his house will likely deepen. He tries not to think about the ground swallowing up his entire family.
“There will be digging underneath. My house could fall into the softened ground. When the mining starts again, there’s no telling how bad it will hurt the land,” he says, walking along the mountain ridge.
It wouldn’t be the first time that a mining disaster hit the town. Laita lives in Sitio Dalicno, part of Ampucao village inside the municipality of Itogon in Benguet province, in the northern Philippines. Dubbed a “gold haven” for its massive deposits of the precious metal, the region has drawn miners to the mountains for centuries.
The town is part of the northern Cordillera range in the Philippines, known for its resource-rich mountains and the Igorot, the region’s majority Indigenous population.
The municipality of Itogon in Benguet province, in the northern Philippines has been dubbed a “gold haven” for its massive deposits of the precious metal. Image by Michael Beltran for Mongabay.
Laita, like most Dalicno residents, has been a small-scale miner all his life, using hand tools to dig small tunnels along the slopes of the mountain and extract ore. These methods have supported his family’s modest life along the village slopes. And like many of his neighbors, Laita says he feels powerless to stop the government from brokering new industrial mining permits on Indigenous soil.
In 2023, the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) concluded talks with Itogon locals to obtain their free, prior and informed consent (FPIC), a requirement for state agencies to allow mining operations on ancestral lands.
These talks first began in 2012 when Itogon-Suyoc Resources Inc. (ISRI), one of the Philippines’ oldest mining firms, initiated its application for production sharing agreement, or APSA 103, to mine 581 hectares (1,426 acres) of Itogon land covering nearly the whole of Dalicno.
If finalized, the agreement would allow ISRI access to 22 million tons of gold-bearing ore for the next 25 years.
Talks proceeded haltingly, gaining momentum in 2018 with a series of community consultations.
Itogon communities initially rejected APSA 103 in 2022. ISRI responded with a motion for reconsideration early in 2023, entailing another round of consultations.
In September 2023, the company finalized an agreement with Indigenous representatives and the NCIP. However, many in Dalicno, where most of ISRI’s operations will take place, question the FPIC process, alleging it was railroaded in ISRI’s favor — a claim both ISRI and the local NCIP branch reject.
To approve APSA 103, the Philippines’ Department of Environment and Natural Resources requires a final signoff from the NCIP called a certification precondition. While this is pending, Dalicno residents are pressing the government to scrap the project altogether.
On the doors of many of Dalicno’s cliffside homes hang signs saying “No to APSA! Save our water sources, built-up areas, people, future!” On the highway to Dalicno hang hand-painted banners that read “Save Dalicno! No to APSA!”
Signs opposing ISRI’s mining plans, such as this one outside a small-scale mining facility, dot the town of Dalicno in the northern Philippines. Image by Michael Beltran for Mongabay.
“Itogon has seen so many lapses with mining, we don’t trust the companies,” says Allan Sabaiano, head of the Dalicno Indigenous Peoples Organization (DIPO), formed in January this year with the goal of overturning the initial agreement. ”They’ve compromised our water sources, and ISRI is coming back to take the rest. They did it by ignoring the voice of Dalicno’s people.”
Fearing the loss of drinkable water from a nearby spring, restricted access to the designated mining areas, and the continued plunder of their ancestral resources, DIPO has been lobbying to cancel APSA 103.
“So many ‘good-intentioned’ companies have mined here,” Dalicno elder Cristeta Caytap tells Mongabay. “But where are the schools and the hospitals? Yes they’ve given some financial assistance on occasion, but we remain underdeveloped while they line their pockets with gold. And now here they come again.”
Eric Andal, ISRI’s resident manager, says the no-mining zones, including residential areas, will be off-limits to the company’s operations. While conceding that large-scale mining has caused some environmental damage, Andal tells Mongabay that “we mitigate our impacts.”
If anything, he adds, it’s the community-driven “small-scale mining which has more of a degrading impact, because it is unregulated with so many working that way,” He says, “They themselves mine underneath their houses. If something collapses, it’s their doing.”
‘Nobody informed me about it’
In September 2023, weeks after the agreement was signed, DIPO filed a petition at the NCIP’s regional office to nullify it, citing irregularities in the consultation process.
According to DIPO, most residents were kept in the dark about the motion. Elder Juanito Erciba, who represented Dalicno at most FPIC talks up until 2022, says he was one of them. “When we said ‘No to APSA’ in 2022, I thought that was the end of it. I never knew about any motion for reconsideration. I just found out there was a signed agreement that nobody informed me about,” Erciba says.
He adds that Jimmy Lumbag, the man who suddenly replaced him, was never affirmed through a community decision, thereby making his participation in the FPIC illegitimate.
“It hurts, upsets my stomach. Is it because I’m just a poor man that I was overlooked? But the community appointed me,” Erciba says.
Small scale mines like this one support the modest lives of many villagers in Itogon. Image by Michael Beltran for Mongabay.
In January 2024, the NCIP dismissed the DIPO petition, deeming it without merit.
According to NCIP community development officer Abeline Cirilo, consensus was achieved with the cooperation of the municipal Indigenous group Itogon Indigenous People’s Organization (IIPO). IIPO, which unlike DIPO is recognized by the NCIP, represented the entire municipality when it came to allowing ISRI entry. The matter was then put to a vote by secret ballot, Cirilo says.
“The outcome registered a yes to the operations while declaring the Dalicno homes and water source a ‘no-mining zone,’” he says.
Rosita Bargaso, the IIPO chair, hails from Itogon’s Gumatdang village, not among the localities that would be directly affected by APSA 103. She refutes DIPO’s claims, telling Mongabay that Dalicno elders were informed but uninterested in the latter part of the consensus building. She adds that they suddenly protested after the agreement was already signed.
Bargaso says Dalicno elders like Erciba oppose APSA 103 because of their “self-interest.” She says the proposed operations would help all of Itogon: “ISRI will permit them to gold mine on its site, [and offer] a chance to work for the company and access to company-owned water sources. The problem is they want all of it for themselves.”
In September 2023, IIPO released a resolution to support APSA 103 and “deny the allegations of alleged irregularities in the conduct of the FPIC.”
Andal seconds this assertion, dismissing DIPO as a “small group making a lot of noise to appear like there are many.” He adds that the support it has generated is because it has reached out to “leftist groups.”
“It was a desperate move on their part,” Andal says. “They can’t convince others anymore so they called on outsiders to help.”
Dalicno elder Cristeta Caytap says she fears industrial-scale mining will contaminate the local water supply. Image by Michael Beltran for Mongabay.
Cirilo also says community voices weren’t ignored. When asked about DIPO’s allegations, including the unceremonious replacement of Erciba, he says that “if that did happen, hopefully it won’t affect the consent given through the voting. We can correct the names on the [agreement], but it cannot undo the outcome.”
DIPO head Sabaiano and many other residents say Dalicno was left out of the vote, rejecting the idea that the outcome represented a “consensus.” He also says IIPO failed Dalicno by “bypassing and excluding its people.”
“Neither the document nor the company has told us what kind of method ISRI will use. They could be ready to crack open the mountain,” he says.
Caytap also voiced her distrust over the “no-mining zone” disclaimer, saying underground digging is usually goes unchecked, causing irreparable and untold damage despite the surface looking untouched. “Mining affects everything,” she says, adding she expecting the tailings to eventually contaminate their spring water.
DIPO has since appealed to the NCIP’s central office, which is currently reviewing the matter.
Meanwhile, the regional office of the environment department’s Mines and Geosciences Bureau confirmed to Mongabay that approval for APSA 103 is on hold pending issuance of a certification precondition from the NCIP. The document is issued when a review by the central office has judged the process of acquiring community consent has complied with the proper guidelines.
So far, the NCIP’s central office has rejected the report its local branch submitted on the FPIC process for the mine because it lacks photographs, minutes, or attendance sheets proving that community assemblies, a key component of FPIC consultations, actually took place.
“We lacked the necessary documentation,” Cirilo says. “We did conduct two assemblies, but there were no pictures, an incomplete report, and we have yet to submit it.”
If that means a delay to issuing the certification precondition, Cirilo says the environment department could grant a one-year special gold mining permit, which only needs approval from municipal officials, forgoing Indigenous consent.
Allan Sabaiano, head of the Dalicno Indigenous Peoples Organization (DIPO), in striped shirt, with a map of mining in Itogon municipality. Image by Michael Beltran for Mongabay.
After the old gold rush
Large-scale mining here began during the U.S. occupation of the Philippines, with the first colonial mine opening in 1903. Since then, firms like ISRI have followed, amassing free patents and leases that continue today.
Lulu Gimenez, a seasoned Itogon community organizer and historian, has worked with groups like the Mining Communities Development Center and the Cordillera People’s Alliance. She says complaints against mines have piled up over the past century. “Communities complained of erosion, ground subsidence, and worsening conditions of water supply, but mining companies appeased them with monetary compensation for poisoned cattle.”
In the 1990s, the tensions erupted, with Itogon locals mounting barricades against the intrusion of heavy mining machinery.
Activists scored a big win against Australian mining firm Anvil in 2007. Anvil had struck a $2.12 million deal with ISRI for its mining rights, and planned to bore 20 holes, each 100 meters (330 feet) deep, for extraction. Locals protested, arguing that Anvil would puncture and drain a water table beneath a vein of ore, and successfully stopped the project.
Itogon residents cite the same fears about ISRI’s latest prospects.
More recent disasters attributed by Itogon locals to mining-related activity have also refreshed long-standing concerns about mining safety. In 2015, a sinkhole swallowed up seven houses in the Itogon village of Virac, forcing the evacuation of 170 families. Then, in 2018, a landslide in Ucab village claimed the lives of 82 miners living in bunkhouses on land controlled by mining firms.
In 2015, APEX Mining Company, owned by the Philippines’ second-richest individual, Enrique Razon, acquired ISRI. In February this year, a landslide in an APEX mining concession the southern province of Davao de Oro province killed nearly 100 people and displaced thousands.
“Corporations have extracted too many minerals and profit from Itogon,” Gimenez says. “The destruction has been going on for over a century. It’s time they leave Itogon alone, let the land heal and let the people redevelop the resources.”
According to data from the Mines and Geosciences Bureau, Benguet province, where Itogon is located, is one of the most intensively mined areas in the Cordillera region. Fourteen of 30 APSAs in the region are in Benguet, as are seven out of the 11 approved mineral-sharing agreements.
Inside one of the many small-scale mining facilities that pepper the hills of Itogon province. Image by Michael Beltran for Mongabay.
Unwanted offer
As far as the mining bureau is concerned, ISRI has an impeccable record. In its 2022 Compliance Scorecard, used to measure how companies abide by safety, health, environmental and social development guidelines, ISRI notched a 94.35% rating.
“We see no problem, insofar as their compliance as a company,” says Alfredo Genetiano, chief engineer at the bureau. “The company conforms to our standards and hence we’ve given them a passing rate.”
The bureau lauded ISRI for its faithfulness to the Big Brother-Small Brother (BBSB) government initiative, where mining companies are obligated to allocate 1.5% of their expenses to community development and employ locals as contract miners. APEX told Mongabay that its BBSB commitment is aimed at reducing illegal, unsafe and unregulated small-scale mining.
ISRI also gave an additional 10 million pesos ($173,000) in goodwill funds to the communities upon the signing of the FPIC agreement last September.
However, Caytap remains skeptical, saying the cons severely outweigh the pros. “It limits the number of people who can mine,” she says. “Here, we go by traditional rules. Young ones, the elderly, anyone can work. And anyone with a bit more is obliged to share what they collect with the others, especially when times are tough. That’s how we’ve survived.”
Under the BBSB system, contract miners are hired in groups for short periods of time, and paid according to how much ore they extract, meaning earnings are highly variable.
ISRI’s Andal, who is also vice president for geology and exploration at APEX Mining, says their BBSB employment arrangements worked well for them in Davao, in the southern Philippines, and they’ve already replicated it with some 400 Itogon contract miners. Should APSA 103 be approved, he says, they could take on around 400 more locals.
While private operators shoulder all of their own costs, under BBSB, Andal says, contract miners only need to pay for their own food. “We provide the tools and buy the ore they extract,” he says.
While Dalicno elders describe small-scale mining as a community act, ISRI’s manager points to unregulated small-scale mining as a significant source of environmental degradation. Image by Michael Beltran for Mongabay.
Working eight-hour shifts, a group of around 20 contract gold miners can make up to 600,000 pesos ($10,400) a month if they’re productive, Andal says. Split evenly, that works out to 1,363 pesos ($23.60) per person per day. Andal says even less productive miners could make about 454 pesos ($7.90) a day, or slightly more than the daily minimum wage for the Cordillera region, which is 430 pesos ($7.45).
Local observers, however, question the touted benefits of BBSB and put the numbers much lower.
Jestone Dela Cruz has worked as a security guard at the Benguet Corporation, the oldest mining company in the Philippines, for nearly a decade, where he says he sees miners come and go, remaining poor. “A group of eight will probably get paid around 20,000 pesos [$347], that’s less than 3,000 pesos [$52] a month,” Dela Cruz says.
Sabaiano, who’s worked on ISRI sites in the past, also says the BBSB offer affords a typically low rate, with some gold miners taking home 7,000 pesos ($121) for two months’ worth of ore.
“How’s one supposed to survive like that? Plus other expenses like food and transportation are shouldered by the workers,” he says.
He also questions if the employment opportunities are even a good thing to begin with. ISRI will gain control over hundreds of hectares of mining land while employing fewer than 1,000 Itogon locals. Dalicno alone has a voting population of more than 2,000.
Caytap says she blames the mining firms for holding back the region’s economic development. “Our land is literally filled with gold. The country has first-class municipalities, we might have exceeded that without the mining firms. But somehow, we are left collecting money to fix our roads,” she says.
Community activists in Dalicno hold a banner protesting ISRI’s mining expansion plans. Image by Michael Beltran for Mongabay.
She adds, however, that she takes heart in the traditions and community spirit that sustain Dalicno and keep the memory of its history and struggle alive.
Local customs foster the collective. Everyday mining is a community act for young and old. During weddings or funerals, extraction is strictly prohibited out of respect for the family. When times are tough, each makes an offering to the deities and fairies to appease them.
For the first time in a long time, APSA 103 threatens to divide the commonly united Dalicno. But Caytap says she hasn’t lost faith, that in times of loss, their traditions beckon stronger. “We band together,” she says.
A recent financial Webinar features Jindalee mining company executive Lindsay Dudfield selling the company’s plan for an immense lithium mining project that would tear apart the heart of irreplaceable Sage-grouse habitat at McDermitt Creek in southeast Oregon. Australian miner Jindalee has spun itself off as a US company, just as Lithium Americas did when it formed Lithium Nevada Corporation (LNC) to mine Thacker Pass further south in the McDermitt caldera. This positions the miners for federal loan largesse as they pursue mining destruction of the sagebrush sea. I wrote about the extraordinary McDermitt Creek values at stake, and the damage and habitat fragmentation already inflicted by 70 or so previous Jindalee exploration drilling sites here.
Distant view of scar from a new road and just one of Jindalee’s past McDermitt drill sites. Look at how wide open and unencumbered by hills this country is – maximizing the distance any mining disturbance sights and sounds will travel.
Jindalee drill hole sump. Drilling waste water left to seep into the ground, Wildlife “exclusion” fence fallen down.
This is a map of the ghastly 2023 Jindalee exploration plan to punch in 267 new drill hole and sump sites and construct 30 miles of new roads. It would fragment an area with a very high density of nesting sagebrush songbirds of all kinds. Birds like Sagebrush Sparrow require continuous blocks of dense mature or old growth big sagebrush. Jindalee boasts its consultant environmental and cultural studies have found “no show-stoppers” and “no red flags”. Industry gets the results it wants when it pays for mine consultant work. Federal and state agencies, after a bit of pro forma sniping, acquiesce to what the mine comes up with.
No red flags? Does the company really expect us to believe they or their consultants aren’t aware of the plight of Sage-grouse, and the importance of the stronghold habitat they would wipe out? The 2015 BLM Sage-grouse plan found the entire McDermitt Creek area and nearly all caldera lands were essential for the bird’s survival. BLM determined that a federal mineral withdrawal was necessary to protect this Focal habitat and to ensure Sage-grouse species survival. The withdrawal never happened, stopped first by mining and cattle industry litigation. BLM then began a stand-alone NEPA analysis for the withdrawal. Trump terminated that withdrawal analysis process. Then after a court ruled his action unlawful, BLM foot-dragging has stalled the most recent withdrawal process at the NEPA scoping stage and it appears merged with a cumbersome major plan revision.
Jindalee’s new exploration proposal – a prelude to a mine – would tragically rip apart the Basin heart. A full blown mine here would obliterate it. Mining noise and visual disturbance emanating outward would make the remaining sage ringing the mine site uninhabitable. The site is surrounded by dozens of leks.
The impossibility of mitigating a mega-mine at McDermitt Creek just blasted further into the stratosphere. Mounting scientific evidence shows how seriously the sight and sound disturbance footprint of industrial projects harms the birds. New research examined geothermal energy development impacts from Ormat plants at Tuscarora Nevada and McGinness Hills/Grass Valley near Austin. (I remember the Battle Mountain BLM manager extolling Ormat’s virtues when the McGinness project was pushed through and then later expanded to take a bigger bite out of sage habitat). New researchfound:
“… sage-grouse population numbers declined substantially in years following the development of a geothermal energy plant … sage-grouse abundance at leks [breeding sites] decreased within five kilometers of the infrastructure and leks were completely abandoned at significantly higher rates within about two kilometers. So, we looked at the mechanisms responsible for declines in numbers and lek abandonment, and we found adverse impacts to survival of female sage-grouse and their nests”.
This reinforces common sense: “Nests located farther from the plant tended to experience higher rates of survival. Interestingly, where hills were located between sage-grouse nests and infrastructure [high topographic impedance], we found the distance effect to be less important. Under those circumstances topography was compensating for the lack of distance and likely serving to reduce effects of light and sound”.
“The physical footprint of geothermal energy infrastructure is small relative to other renewable energy … but noise and light pollution emanating from these power plants likely cause larger adverse direct impacts to wildlife populations than infrastructure alone”.
There aren’t big hills to block a lithium mine’s 24 hour a day sight and sound impacts in the McDermitt bowl. The mined area would suffer outright sage obliteration. Surrounding sagebrush would be exposed to unimpeded straight line 24 hour a day mine operation visual impacts and noise of all kinds.
Jindalee must know of the indigenous opposition and resistance to the Thacker Pass lithium mine in the southern caldera, located in similarly unceded Paiute-Shoshone ancestral lands. Controversy and lawsuits over Thacker Pass have been in the headlines for years. It’s a pre-eminent example of an unjust transition to alternative energy and the green-washing of air and water polluting habitat wrecking dirty hard rock mining. Unfortunately, a District Court Judge’s ruling did not halt the Thacker Pass mine construction. However, the lawsuits by environmental groups, Tribes and a local rancher opposing the mine continue. The District Court decision was appealed to the Ninth Circuit, where a hearing is scheduled for June 26.
Thacker Pass mine development would destroy a Traditional Cultural Property, where Paiute-Shoshone ancestors were massacred. This spring, it’s been the site of the indigenous Ox Sam Women’s Camp, Newe Momokonee Nokotun, set up in protest. Descendants of Ox Sam, a survivor of a US cavalry massacre at Thacker Pass, helped establish it.
Jindalee Webinar statements also hint at efforts afoot to alter Oregon state mining processes. After lamenting the project wasn’t in Nevada, Jindalee said it was talking to politicians and the head of the state mining Department (DOGAMI).
The company’s braggadocio made me blow off deadlines and go once again to McDermitt Creek to document its great biodiversity values. I then went from the beauty of singing sagebrush songbirds, newly hatched Sage-grouse chicks and peaking rare plant blooms at McDermitt Creek (photos below) and down into the Montana Mountains by Thacker Pass.
Sagebrush Sparrows abound at McDermitt Creek. They’re great little birds and often sing throughout the day. And they’re vanishing from many places. A biologist just told me he thinks they may be extirpated in Morrow County Oregon where he’s long inventoried bird. No larger continuous blocks of lower elevation sage = no Sagebrush Sparrows.
Hymenoxys, an Oregon sensitive plant growing on clay soils.
Humboldt Mountains Milkweed, a medicinal plant, on clay soils.
Mountain Bluebird.
Sky drama all spring long.
Short-horned Lizard – a master of invisibility.
Gray Flycatcher. They nest in head high Basin big sagebrush, which is becoming as scarce as hen’s teeth.
Lark Sparrow. They’re exuberant singers and are dining on Mormon crickets at McDermitt Creek.
An indescribable Indian paintbrush hue.
We’re supposed to sit back and let all this beauty and biodiversity be destroyed for a lithium mine? No way.
Thacker Pass – Turmoil, Land Mutilation, Montana Mountains
I drove south to Orovada and headed west to the turn-off from the state highway into Pole Creek road, the main access to the Montana Mountains. Thacker Pass lies at the southern base of these mountains. A maroon Allied Security company truck squarely blocked the road. Chain link fencing with No Trespassing and No Drone Zone signs was placed off to both sides.
I stopped, got out and approached a security guard who appeared at the truck. He refused to let me pass. After several minutes of my insistent repetition that this was a public road, the BLM mine EIS said this road would always be open, and that blocking use of this road indicated the EIS, the BLM and Lithium Americas had lied, the security guard relented and said he would call the head of security.
The boss pulled up in a white truck as a sudden rain whirlwind bore down. His face was obscured, and identity concealed by a tan balaclava-like hood and dark sunglasses. When he first arrived, he got out of his truck and pointed a camera device at me. I thought WTF is this – a security firm mercenary decked out for Operation Iraqi Freedom? Abu Ghraib in Orovada? I again repeated repeatedly that this was a public access road, and I was going up into the Montana Mountains to camp. He retreated to his pickup, likely to run me and my license plates through some creepy database. Finally, I was allowed to pass through.
Just up the road was the Ox Sam Protest Camp site, located on a huge mine water pipeline gash that the lithium company had gouged into the earth. The pipeline gash runs right by the sacred Sentinel (or Nipple) Rock. The tents appeared lifeless, flaps blowing open in the rain squall as I drove by. With better cell phone service up in the mountains, I called Winnemucca BLM, asked to talk to a Manager, Assistant Manager, somebody, and told the receptionist that the mine was trying to block the public access road. She said there was no one to talk with. I asked for a Manager’s e-mall address. She refused to give me an address and shunted me to the general BLM mailbox where public comments go to be ignored. Winnemucca is the BLM outpost in charge of enforcing LNC’s compliance with EIS requirements. They’ll be sure to jump on enforcement actions when the public brings potential mining violations to their attention over the next 45-years.
Later I saw a Google alert for “Thacker Pass”, and read that the camp had been raided after an incident. Underscore News/Report for America writes: “On Wednesday, police from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office and private security for Lithium Nevada, a subsidiary of Lithium Americas, cleared the camp and arrested one protester.
When I left the next day, the chain link fence with No Trespassing signs was still up by the sides of the access route. The security truck was gone, and I drove on through. A local resident pulled up. We chatted, gazing up at the mountains that were witnessing the lithium mine destruction unfold. He knows the country like the back of his hand. He said you could see over 20 mountain ranges from the Montanas. Our presence generated the interest of security guards who came by to check us out as we stood by the state road right of way. A project worker came and moved the chain link fence with its No Trespassing signs away – at least for now.
Allied Security’s aggressive approach to security has gained notoriety. The Denver city council canceled their contract after two Allied guards beat a black man so hard they caused him permanent brain damage. In May, Time magazine profiled a long troubling history of Allied incidents.
How fitting. Lithium Americas came in claiming Thacker Pass was some kind of great “green” mine, as cover for plain old dirty open pit mining and a noxious lithium processing plant. Now they’ve hired a security firm prone to violence. I don’t know what went down with the Ox Sam camp. But I do know that having the security boss decked out in black ops head gear is an effort to intimidate, and an indication the security firm may have things to hide. Security personnel concealing their identity or playing gatekeeper on a public lands access road in this way have no place at a project on public lands. Months before the Ox Sam camp was set up, LNC had established a manned compound with a building and fencing and what looked like cameras right by the Pole Creek access road. Driving up into the mountains in April to trek across the snow to the Montana-10 lek had already felt like running a gauntlet. I wager that anyone going in or out that public road gets recorded.
LNC has many mining claims staked up in the mountains in Sage-grouse stronghold habitat including at the Montana 10 lek. This makes efforts to limit access or intimidate people so they don’t go up there more concerning. Back home, I consulted the Thacker Final EIS:
“SR 293, Pole Creek Road, Crowley Creek Road and Rock Creek Road are the main transportation routes in the Project area. Under Alternative A, LNC would not close, block, or limit in any manner access along these routes”. FEIS at 494-495. The EIS also constrained use of these access roads for certain types of mine activities.
Photos below from up in the Montana Mountains looking down on spring 2023 LNC scars from drilling and bulldozing in migratory bird nesting season. The drilling is creeping upslope. It’s hard to tell if some may be outside the project boundary. Nevada BLM uses in-front-of-the-bulldozer bird survey protocols that are deeply flawed with transects spaced 100 ft. apart – a distance far too wide to detect cryptic sagebrush birds that are experts at concealment. You practically have to step on or by a nest to detect it. The only way to avoid migratory bird “take” is for the mine to not destroy the bird habitat in spring.
LNC’s drill scarring is a mere prelude to the destruction that’s planned – 5,694 acres of outright destruction in a 17,933 acre project zone. The enormity and scale of the planned mine is mind boggling – a deep open pit, a waste rock pile, all types of infrastructure, a lithium smelter/sulfuric acid plant on-site using huge volumes of waste sulfur shipped into a new railroad off-loading site by the Winnemucca airport. The latter was just announced a few months ago, to the dismay of nearby residents who find themselves facing living by a hazardous materials zone. Hundreds of tons of off-loaded material will be trucked to Thacker Pass and burned every day in a plant whose air scrubber design wasn’t even finalized before the Thacker decision was signed by BLM. What stink and toxic pollution will this lithium processing generate? McDermitt caldera soils contain uranium and mercury. Mine water use is estimated to be 1.7 billion gallons annually. Enormous volumes of diesel fuel will be used throughout the mine’s operation. What’s green about all this?
Think of the volume of water that will be sucked through these pipes.
Beautiful dense big sagebrush full of Sage Thrashers, Brewer’s Sparrows, and Sage-grouse sign, up in the mountains where LNC has claims galore.
Sacrificing the Interior West for Corporate Energy Dominance While Energy Conservation Lags or Is Forgotten Altogether
Big Green environmental groups and outdoor interests who’ve been silent on the unfolding lithium mine destruction at Thacker Pass, or the tragic destruction of Mojave Desert Tortoise habitat for Big Solar and many other brewing “green” energy controversies better wake up. The lithium boom plague that’s descended on the West is hard rock mining at its worst. Thousands of acres at each mine site become essentially privatized (with security guards) for 40 or 50 years. Much of the land is reduced to waste rock rubble piles, gaping pits, infrastructure all over the place. Local water is used up for processing and for suppressing clouds of dust, and mine pollutants contaminate the air and ground water.
US taxpayers are helping finance these colonialist lithium mines. LNC received commitments for a $600 million dollar loan investment of US tax dollars. General Motors, while continuing to pump out gargantuan trucks and EV Hummers priced at $110,000, provided LNC with a $600 million dollar injection. In the Jindalee Webinar, executive Dudfield assured a questioner that their company will also be “in queue” for similar handouts. The miners are gobbling up funds for a battery technology that may soon be outdated. China is zooming past the US with its development of sodium batteries and is introducing them in low-end vehicles, a sane path forward. Why aren’t these funds going to research alternatives to lithium and safer less earth-wrecking technologies? Why isn’t Nevada Senator Catherine Cortez-Masto directing her attention to spurring new technologies and sustainability? Instead she’s using “critical minerals” mantra to justify introducing a bill to make the 1872 Mining Law even worse, and a wholesale giveaway to mining companies.
Jindalee’s Webinar talk said the company embraced “social license and responsibility”, then later emphasized that McDermitt Creek was “a long, long way” from Oregon population centers like Salem and Portland. This highlights how lithium mine pollution, cultural site desecration, community de-stabilization and ecological damage will be out of sight and out of mind of urban elites.
US government policy is now based on greatly accelerating energy colonialism of all types within our own borders, and especially on willy-nilly sacrifice of the public lands of the Interior West. This allows massively subsidized corporations (often tied to a foreign mothership) and billionaires to retain a chokehold on energy. Conservation is paid lip service. BLM’s Tracy Stone-Manning just announced a new proposed rule making it easier for BLM to hand over public lands to wind and solar developers, furthering de facto public lands privatization for half a human lifespan.
But people are catching on. A surprising thing recently happened in Idaho. The entire Idaho legislature (all the Republicans and the hand full of Democrats alike) voted in favor of a Resolution opposing the BLM Lava Ridge Wind Farm, with its 400 turbines standing 800 feet tall sprawling across 3 counties. Lava Ridge’s plan managed to offend or disgust everybody – from agricultural operations and home site impacts, to Golden Eagle and rare bat killing, to destroying the stark setting of the Minidoka Japanese Internment Camp Monument and marring the Dark Skies and wildness of Craters of the Moon.
The same Legislators, who in a normal year would be inviting Land Grab proponents from Utah to speak in the session, were pushing protection of public lands from this behemoth of LS Power’s subsidiary Magic Valley Energy. It’s facilitated by the planned new LS Power SWIP North renewables-focused transmission line. Idaho Power and PacifiCorp’sGateway “green” transmission line has also resulted in a stampede for more wind and solar
leases in south-central Idaho.
If you live in the West and love the outdoors, be very afraid of what the Biden administration’s breakneck push for many more of these “green” lines will do to public lands, and your access to areas beyond – once projects feeding energy into the line are built and the fencing goes up. It’s the sagebrush sea equivalent of building a road through the Amazon.
While there are no huge wind farms yet on public lands in Idaho, there are many smaller scale turbine arrays on private lands across the Snake River Plain. It’s become quite apparent that industrial wind is not benign. Above all else, folks realized how badly Idaho was getting screwed by the Lava Ridge project and its export of energy to benefit coastal populations. The Legislature said No to Lava Ridge exploitation of Idaho as an energy colony. Counties in the Mojave Desert are now starting to resist some industrial solar developments overrunning public lands. Remotely sited “renewable” energy or “critical minerals” projects amount to public land privatization. They cause profound losses of many kinds – scarring the land, sucking it dry, extinguishing the wildlife that’s managed to persist in the face of merciless domination since White settlement, trenching a massacre site.
I’m outraged at the ecocidal stupidity with which this “energy transition” is being carried out. Will we soon see Jindalee get US tax dollars to wipe out the McDermitt Creek Sage-grouse stronghold? How ironic that would be. Interior just announced funding for major sagebrush habitat restoration using Infrastructure Bill funds in High Priority sagebrush areas. It turns out one of the sites chosen is the Montana Mountains area. Mapping shows it includes the Thacker Pass mine area too, where nearly all the sage is on the verge of being destroyed by LNC. Close review of maps for Interior’s Montana “restoration” project shows it encompasses the McDermitt Creek watershed, hence the entire area coveted by Jindalee for massive new drilling followed by open pit mining. It would be absurd to greenlight Jindalee’s ghastly exploration plan in primo habitat, when the Interior Department has identified this very same landscapeto be among the highest priority for restoration – because so much sage has already been lost already. The caldera is also key for connectivity between Sheldon and Owyhee Sage-grouse populations and for biodiversity preservation.
How long before rejection of lithium and other “critical mineral” mines grips communities, especially as promised jobs evaporate with increased mine automation and robot technology, and as the environment goes to hell? But hey, as LNC is showing us, there’s always a bright future as a security guard– at least until the lithium company gets itself a pack of Robodogs.
Katie Fite is a biologist and Public Lands Director with WildLands Defense.
Editor’s note: We all know the word mammal, but not many people may have heard about tetrapod species. This group of wild animals includes amphibians, birds and reptiles in addition to mammals. Most people love jaguars and monkeys, but an ecosystem is thriving with all kinds of particular species, also with the ones that are green and greasy or look like little dinosaurs.
Because of their importance researchers want to find out how many tetrapod species have gone extinct in comparison to how many can be rediscovered; just because nobody saw them in between a few years, doesn’t mean that they’re gone. With this “lost and found” method scientists can prove how bad the extinction rate really is, and, in a case of rediscovery, get funding for protection measures.
In our so called civilization there’s no real protection for other than humans, wildlife has to make way when human needs appear. In a natural world where nonhumans needs were also considered we wouldn’t need to count for lost and found species. We would give them their own space and let them be. Yet it seems nowadays the only way to get funding for nature conservancy projects is by research, a method that only speaks to the mind.
But the mind is limited, human brains cannot grasp wholeness, beauty and true meaning of a healthy environment with only thoughts. Often it hinders us to connect to the special beings surrounding us. So in addition to science we as a society need a culture of connection and heartfelt unity to not lose more.
Lost species are those that have not been observed in the wild for over ten years, despite searches to find them. Lost tetrapod species (four-limbed vertebrate animals including amphibians, birds, mammals and reptiles) are a global phenomenon – there are more than 800 of them, and they are broadly distributed worldwide.
Our research, published today in the journal Global Change Biology, attempts to pin down why certain tetrapod species are rediscovered but others not. It also reveals that the number of lost tetrapod species is increasing decade-on-decade. This means that despite many searches, we are losing tetrapod species at a faster rate than we are rediscovering them. In particular, rates of rediscovery for lost amphibian, bird and mammal species have slowed in recent years, while rates of loss for reptile species have increased.
This is not good news. Species are often lost because their populations have shrunk to a very small size due to human threats like hunting and pollution. Consequently, many lost species are in danger of becoming extinct (in fact, some probably are extinct). However, it is difficult to protect lost species from extinction because we don’t know where they are.
Rediscoveries lead to conservation action
In 2018, researchers in Colombia successfully searched for the Antioquia brush-finch (Atlapetes blancae), a bird species unrecorded since 1971. This rediscovery led to the establishment of a reserve to protect the remaining population of the brush-finch, which is tiny and threatened by habitat loss caused by agricultural expansion and climate change.
The Antioquia brush-finch, which was rediscovered in Colombia in 2018, and protected through the establishment of a new reserve.Victor Manuel Arboleda/iNaturalist
The Victorian grassland earless dragon (Tympanocryptis pinguicolla) was rediscovered in Australia last year. It hadn’t been recorded for 54 years, and was presumed to be extinct, due to the loss of its grassland habitat and predation by invasive alien species including feral cats. Its rediscovery resulted in government funding to trial new survey techniques to find further populations of the species, a breeding program, and the preparation of a species recovery plan.
The Victorian grassland earless dragon was rediscovered in Australia last year.CSIRO/Wikimedia
Thus, rediscoveries are important: they provide evidence of the continued existence of highly threatened species, prompting funding for conservation action. The results of our study may help to prioritise searches for lost species. In the image below, we mapped their global distribution, identifying regions with many lost and few rediscovered species.
The global distribution of lost and rediscovered tetrapod species. Grey shading and text = the number of species within a region (a country or an island) that are currently lost (globally). Orange text: the number of rediscovered species with a range incorporating this region. White regions without orange numbers: no data on lost or rediscovered species. White regions with orange numbers: regions where lost species have been rediscovered and no (known) lost species remain.Thomas Evans, Global Change Biology, 2024
What factors influence rediscovery?
Sadly, many quests to find lost species are unsuccessful. In 1993, searches in Ghana and the Ivory Coast over seven years failed to rediscover a lost primate, Miss Waldron’s red colobus (Piliocolobus waldronae). The research team concluded that this noisy and conspicuous monkey, unrecorded since 1978, may well be extinct. Its demise has been caused by hunting and the destruction of its forest habitat. Further searches in 2005, 2006 and 2019 were also unsuccessful, although calls that were possibly by this species were heard in 2008.
Searches for the Sinú parakeet in the Upper Sinú Valley recorded the presence of ten other parrot species including the great green macaw (Ara ambiguus) (pictured) which is critically endangered.Grigory Heaton/iNaturalist
So why is it that some species are rediscovered while others remain lost? Are there specific factors that influence rediscovery? We aimed to answer these questions in our study, in order to improve our ability to distinguish between the types of lost species we can rediscover, from those that we cannot, because they are extinct.
We compiled a database of 856 lost and 424 rediscovered tetrapod species (amphibians, birds, mammals and reptiles). We then proposed three broad hypotheses about factors that might influence rediscovery: characteristics of (i) tetrapod species, and (ii) the environment influence rediscovery, and (iii) human activities influence rediscovery.
For example, body mass (a species characteristic) may positively influence rediscovery, as larger lost species should be easier to find. Lost species occupying dense forests (a characteristic of the environment) may not be rediscovered as searching for them is difficult. Lost species affected by threats associated with human activities (e.g., invasive alien species, which are being spread to new locations by global trade) may not be rediscovered, as they may be extinct.
Based on these hypotheses, we collected data on a series of variables associated with each lost and rediscovered species (for example, their body mass), which we then analysed for their influence on rediscovery.
Hard to find + neglected = rediscovered
On the upside, our results suggest that while many lost species are difficult to find, with some effort and the use of new techniques, they are likely to be rediscovered. These species include those that are very small (including many lost reptile species), those that live underground, those that are nocturnal, and those living in areas that are difficult to survey.
In fact, since the completion of our study, De Winton’s Golden Mole (Cryptochloris wintoni) has been rediscovered in South Africa. This species hadn’t been recorded in the wild since 1937. It lives underground much of the time, so searches were conducted using techniques including environmental DNA and thermal imaging.
Our results also suggest some species are neglected by conservation scientists, particularly those that are not considered to be charismatic, such as reptiles, small species and rodents. Searches for these species may also be rewarded with success. Voeltzkow’s chameleon (Furcifer voeltzkowi), a small reptile species, was rediscovered in Madagascar in 2018.
The Bramble Cay melomys – once considered to be a lost species, but now declared extinct.State of Queensland/Wikimedia
Lost or extinct?
Unfortunately, our results also suggest that some lost species are unlikely to be found no matter how hard we look, because they are extinct. For example, remaining lost mammal species are, on average, three times larger than rediscovered mammal species. Some of these large, charismatic, conspicuous species should have been rediscovered by now.
Furthermore, one third of remaining lost mammal species are endemic to islands, where tetrapod species are particularly vulnerable to extinction. The Bramble Cay melomys (Melomys rubicola), which was once considered to be a lost species, has recently been declared extinct by the Australian Government. It occupied a small island that has been extensively surveyed – if it still existed it should have been rediscovered by now.
Lost bird species have, on average, been missing for longer than those that have been rediscovered (28% have been missing for more than 100 years), and many have been searched for on several occasions – perhaps some of these species should also have been rediscovered by now.
Nevertheless, unexpected rediscoveries of long-lost species like the Cebu flowerpecker (Dicaeum quadricolor) do occur, so we shouldn’t lose hope, and we should definitely keep searching. However, some searches are being carried out for long-lost species that are considered to be extinct, such as the thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus). Perhaps the limited resources available for biodiversity conservation would be better used to search for lost species likely to still exist.
Thomas Evans is a Research scientist at Freie Universität Berlin and Université Paris-Saclay
Editor’s Note: In our fight for the defense of the natural world, it is important that we feel connected to nature. Given that there is so little left in the world that could be called “natural,” it may be hard to do for many of us. It is in this spirit that we bring to you a story of a walk into the wilderness of Nuyts in the south west of Western Australia. At the beginning of the year, we hope you feel closer to your roots: the mother Earth.
Finally, exactly two months after my birthday, we had the time, headspace and energy to go do the Nuyts Wilderness Walk that was my birthday hike choice for this year. We had done a gorgeous reconnaissance hike in preparation for it a couple of months back, and it was good to at last have a day set aside in good weather for this long and special wilderness trail.
We began near the Deep River bridge and set out for Thompson Cove.
Did I mention the old-growth Karri/Tingle forest is awe-inspiring? There is so little of it left – I wish I could travel back in time 250 years to see this place before it was colonised by a destructive industrial culture which has chewed its way through most of the coastal ecosystems since arriving – and to put an invisible shield around Australia to stop Europeans from ever finding this continent. Imagine Australia if it had remained in the hands of its Indigenous people, who lived here for 60,000 years without utterly destroying the place.
Track maps and information on local hikes were posted near the bridge.
Today we were heading for Thompson Cove, but we are keen to do this gorgeous walk all over again to check out alternative destination Aldridge Cove.
On our reconnaissance walk into the Nuyts we had gone from John Rate Lookout via Mt Clare to this bridge – which is so wobbly we crossed it one at a time so we’d not fall over!
Nice views of the Deep River in either direction – this is one of the few rivers in South-Western Australia which still has intact riparian vegetation and relatively clean water. Most of the others, including the Swan and Canning Rivers in the state capital, are polluted sewers with denuded and eroded banks. When we walk in conservation areas like this, we get a glimpse of the world as it was before Homo colossus began to systematically destroy it.
You may notice the water is brownish. This is caused by natural tannins in the riparian vegetation. Imagine it as a kind of cold-brewed tea. There are many rivers and inlets on the South Coast which naturally contain tannins from the surrounding native vegetation. In Scotland this happens in peat bogs; people traditionally tanned leather there. Here’s Tom Langhorne explaining how that is done, without causing the kind of environmental damage and waste associated with industrial tanning. By the way, many hides these days are going into landfill because of vegan objections to leather, and the low cost of synthetic and non-biodegradable substitutes – which is so utterly wasteful, earth-polluting and nonsensical.
One of Tom Langhorne’s many wonderful videos on traditional survival skills in his native Scotland
The first walk section immediately after the bridge took us through Karri forest. Here’s some of the beauty all around in that place. This vibrant banksia flower below was one of a cluster on the ground. Local cockatoos often nip off flowers and fruits this way – but only some of them.
Walking, you will often go through stands of Casuarinas in the forest, which create a little world of their own. The path we were on was wonderfully soft and springy; the sort that you would walk on for hours just for the joy of it. The aromas in the air were a lovely mix of freshness, recent rain, earth, aromatic oils from the various myrtaceous species, fungi, and the decomposition of plant materials in the humus layer. Get down on the ground sometime after rain in a natural forest, lift some of the leaves off the ground until you get to where the fungal mycelia are, and take some deep breaths. One of the best smells on the planet.♥
And this is not the same in a tree plantation – yet many modern people would not be able to distinguish between a natural forest, a logged forest and a plantation. Of course, there are few remnant forest ecosystems left, so most contemporary Westerners have never walked in one; we’re lucky on the South Coast of Western Australia that there are still patches of it around. Those places are incomparable and took many thousands of years to become what they are. One of the reasons I write these hiking photoessays is to show people who haven’t had the opportunity to experience for themselves what Australian remnant ecosystems look like up close.
And here’s one of Jess and me.
I always find it astonishing to look at the impoverished parklands people create around cities that they apparently find aesthetically appealing. I hike in what nature has made; it’s absolutely no comparison. This forest is a wonderland filled with life and its life-sustaining processes. It is species-rich, complex and interconnected to such an astounding degree. If anyone hasn’t read Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life yet, let me highly recommend it.
We took lots of photos of mosses, lichens, fungi. This is nature recycling, and making a great deal of beauty and life doing so. Our culture talks about recycling and it’s mostly a myth – in nature it’s a law.
Below you can see the construction of an ant-lion, who creates a funnel to trap prey insects to feed on. In nature, the population excesses of each species become food for another species so that no species assumes plague proportions, and diversity can flourish. It is important for Westerners to have a good look at their attitudes to mortality, which is not the tragedy it is made out to be by people who are more invested in fear and ego survival than they are awed by the circle of birth-life-death-life in nature, going around like a gift and creating the most astonishing and beautiful world in which we get a brief turn on the stage which we should honour, and learn our kinship in.
Most people who haven’t grown up near places like this see predator-prey as “nature red in tooth and claw” – well, who’s projecting but Homo colossus, the most destructive species of them all, harbouring many pathological individuals who kill for kicks or greed, not for basic sustenance – a culture that has destroyed much of the biosphere itself, instead of taking basic sustenance from other species’ reproductive excess and yielding themselves in turn at the end.
Woodland and heathland alternated with patches of forest as we progressed towards the coast.
It’s fungal fruiting season since the autumn rains finally saturated the earth, and it’s spectacular. We took lots of photos and we know Sara will enjoy those.♥ Fungi are amazing creatures. I would really like people to understand that all life forms are alive and precious – not just humans and the animals we find cute. Also, that all life is sentient, not just things with a nervous system like our own.
Also that the species is more important than the individual. In nature, individuals feed on other individuals in the food web, but they do not exterminate entire species – something our completely insane ecocidal culture does routinely, and currently at the rate of ~200 species every day. I can’t tell you how obscene that is; and the utter irony that so much destruction is being carried out as we speak by making so-called “green” technologies.
Also news flash: “Green” vegan soy (which is grown in destructive monocultures and shipped from far away) isn’t a lesser environmental problem than people eating the grass-fed herbivores on their own locality’s existing pastures. People should eat as locally as possible and avoid as much as possible all forms of intensive animal or plant production. I’m having a relatively easy time avoiding feedlotted animal products as a smallholder, eating the beef off our own grass, pastured eggs and dairy grown by other local smallholders, and accessing organically grown F&V from my own garden. I am having a very hard time coming off the intensively farmed plant products that form the backbone of calorie intake for most of us: The cereals, the legumes, mostly grown as monocrops with high fertiliser, herbicide, pesticide and fossil fuel inputs in devastated countryside far from where I live. The flour for my bread, the lentils for my soup. No wonder Irish peasants ate a lot of potatoes, and that I am always trying to grow more of them. It’s the most calorie-dense plant food I can grow, but it’s not an easy crop. I need to collect a lot of animal manure to grow it.
The central problem is how far we have drifted from being a part of the food web. Ideally you’d be hunter-gathering, but most of the world’s natural ecosystems have been devastated by our industrial culture, and most of us have neither the constitution nor the skills required for that kind of life. We are moored in our own modernity, with the wreckage all around us. The best I can do is to try to grow my own food and eat as locally as possible. My husband and I consider native ecosystems sacrosanct and live where we do to steward for conservation 50 hectares of native sclerophyll woodlands and heathlands that came with 10 hectares of pasture on which we run a smallholding according to organic and permaculture principles. We’re planting shelter belts and wildlife habitat into the pasture, battling invasive species (like local pasture mainstay kikuyu, an African runner grass) with glyphosate to be able to do this (the lowest-impact herbicide for conservation work – please read the downloadable pdf in this link if you want to understand the context), don’t have tractors or any other fossil fuel driven farm machinery and are feeding ourselves and others while fine-tuning our practices.
In an ideal world we’d all be working on getting back to entirely local low-external-input food-growing systems that allow wildlife back into devastated areas, while drastically reducing our family sizes to counteract the at least tenfold overshoot of our species – but that’s another topic. When we are hiking in natural ecosystems like this, I can’t help but be aware that human beings lived in and off these original Australian ecosystems for 60,000 years without bulldozing or ploughing or polluting or concreting over anything, and without taking more than they needed. They also took active steps to limit the offspring they produced and lived in a harmony with their environment that our own massively destructive and ever-expanding coloniser culture can only dream about.
Do you notice how the leaf margins of the tree seedling above have been gnawed? This is normal life in a food web. Were this an ornamental in a park or garden, many Homo colossus would reach for a bottle of pesticide and exterminate insects, who are “bad” for causing such “damage” (we’ll skip the massive irony over who is saying that). But in a natural system, a degree of herbivory on the leaves of plants is as normal and necessary as a degree of predation on animals, for reasons discussed earlier. There is inbuilt resilience to such losses, and if you plant some eucalypts away from their natural ranges, they may break entire branches from excess weight because their foliage isn’t being appropriately pruned by the herbivores that feed on them.
Below we have a photo of a Macrozamia palm. Local Noongar people collected their large seeds to eat. Like many of their traditional plant foods, these seeds required soaking to leach out toxic chemicals. The local Indigenous diet was quite high in animal foods and comparatively low in plant foods. Australia is one of the most difficult places to survive hunter-gathering. Local marsupial mammals have an about two degree Celsius lower body temperature than the average placental mammal, to conserve energy on the available resources. The kangaroo has one of the most energy-efficient locomotion methods on the planet. Koalas, surviving off difficult to digest eucalyptus leaves, are super-slow, like sloths.
To survive in the Australian bush, humans have to be prepared to eat whatever is available: The plant seeds, tubers and greens they can find and detoxify if necessary, larger animal species like kangaroo and emu, the small mammals like bettongs and possums which have gone into rapid decline since the arrival of the Europeans, birds, eggs, fish, shellfish, lizards, turtles, frogs, and insects like the Witchetty grub, which an elder from a different Australian region to ours shows us the ins and outs of in the clip below.
I love the attitude of the Indigenous people in this clip to eating the grub. It’s just food. If you see a white Australian demonstrate how to eat a Witchetty grub, there is usually a lot of chest-beating and machismo to go with the meal. The kids I taught in high school often wrinkled their noses at the idea of eating a grub, but as I pointed out to them, most of us love and regularly eat evaporated condensed bee vomit (honey). It’s just that we don’t call it that.
We also eat matured plant ovaries (fruit), ground-up plant embryos and their endosperm (flour), whole plant embryos (in almonds, peanuts etc), and mussels which are during the breeding season largely ovary and/or testicle, and all their other innards. Then there’s eggs; I’m sure I don’t have to explain where those come from. And cheese, well, that is a product made from the secretions of a modified sebaceous gland, fermented by microbes and containing their excrements. And it’s delicious.
To which the middle school age range often said, “OK, Miss, I’m never going to eat anything else again!” But of course they did; the point is, it’s just that much of what we do is not considered, it’s unthinking autopilot. Especially if you’re buying processed food or even packaged meat, you can be totally divorced from the consciousness that living beings are the sustenance of other living beings (unless you can photosynthesise, and even then, plants need the minerals from the dead bodies of other living things and help recycle those). You don’t see where your food came from and you should see where it came from. If you grow your own, or even buy from local growers, you can be much more aware of what is sustaining you, where it came from and whether you are OK with that.
And you can at leisure consider whether it is fair on other life forms to have more than one child in our current human overshoot situation, where we have already converted much of the planetary biomass into humans and their agricultural plants and animals and driven countless species into extinction with our anthropocentrism and narcissistic focus on individual rights to do as we damn well please.
People lived here once, and ate what the forest provided, and did not take more than they needed, or sell any of it to anyone, for a profit or at all. And before our ecocidal culture, so did our ancestors; don’t forget this. We are all descended from people who once were hunter-gatherers, and were conquered by the sociopaths who were advantaged by the toxic culture of conquest, and their enablers. Remember this when you notice sociopaths and their enablers in our own day and age.
These pretty shelf fungi are rumoured to be edible. Of course, as was explained to me when I was little: All mushrooms are edible; some only once. I love mushrooms, to look at and to eat – but as I am living outside of these remnant ecosystems, and my later ancestors were agricultural people, I feel duty bound to try to scrape my food from what I can grow in an ecocide zone that I am simultaneously trying to help the wild things back into.
Xanthorrhoea preissii, the grass-tree pictured below, was dubbed a Blackboy by Europeans for its resemblance (when it carries a flower stalk) to an Indigenous hunter standing on one leg holding a spear. It’s an image that makes the child in me smile and the adult in me long for the time when that would have been a common sight in this part of the world. Those were far better days, ecologically and in terms of social justice. The ecological part of my statement is self-evident. The social part: Indigenous societies, while not perfect either, did not routinely dispossess a large part of their tribe in order to provide a small part with unjustified riches and a pedestal from which to spit on and oppress others. Unemployment and homelessness were not things that plagued their worlds. Yet our Western culture has made many people homeless, and so many billions and billions of wild creatures that it crushed and drove out.
The tree below lost its top some time ago, maybe to lightning or a storm – but look how it grows regardless, and is beautiful in how it is shaped by its responses to challenges. You don’t see trees like this in city parks – they would be considered objectionable, like a supermarket apple that doesn’t look like a plastic model of an apple and exactly the same as all the others. Anything like that, our ignorant and soulless culture wants to throw out, cut down, dismiss, destroy, replace with something “better”.
I love wild places like this, and feel deeply at home in them. I remember I am an animal and the earth is my mother. And though the people of my own culture have ransacked this planet and its wildlands, and driven many of my brothers and sisters to extinction, and brought genocide and awful ongoing suffering to cultures more benign and wiser than our own, my heart recognises my home and who I was supposed to be; and this I will try to be, for as long as I have breath.
Credit for my hiking staff goes to my husband, who began making them a few years ago from selected branches of different origin. Mine is made from a pine sapling that is an invasive species here and grew in a grove across the road from us, where each year dozens more pines pop up, potentially displacing trees more useful to wildlife. At least the cockatoos eat their seeds, but this also spreads them.
Next we crossed another footbridge over a nice clear stream. This is like something out of Lord Of The Rings, like Rivendell. I think one deep reason many of us are drawn to imaginary places like that is because so much of that was once real – the natural world before civilisation, industry, pollution, power lines, roads, cars – and are an alternative route we could have taken, had sociopathy and soullessness not created Homo colossus. Our culture is the Orcs, is Sauron, slicing up the Ents and anything else it can get its hands on as fodder for its greed and its never-ending wars.
Here is the base of a Karri tree so you can see it bark. Karri is called Eucalyptus diversicolor because of the colour of its bark.
In the next photo, we are looking up at this massive tree, and it is impossible for me to fit all its branches into the frame.
Remember, all these things make themselves and each other. It took millions of years to get here, and our mainstream culture has no qualms about getting its chainsaws out in a place like this, or bulldozing it to the ground to make way for its suburbs, freeways and industrial estates. Homo colossus takes living ecosystems, degrades or outright kills them, and turns them into dead commodities and built environments. The word some American Indigenous tribes have for that kind of insanity is wetiko – literally a virus of selfishness, an evil spirit that invades the human mind and makes a person insatiable.
These are blackboy stems, in various stages of being recycled.
I just love the way some trees grow all gnarly in a natural ecosystem.
Increasingly, the coastward path took us through heathlands with very sandy, acid soils.
This is where you can find a lot of carnivorous plants. Western Australia is estimated to have over a third of the world’s carnivorous plant species. The soils here are ancient and have been leached over millennia of the fertility of geologically young soils. The sand in valley floors like this is referred to by farmers as “gutless” but hosts many of our biodiversity hotspots. It turns out that challenging conditions combined with geological stability and a long continental isolation result in a plethora of evolutionary solutions, including many unusual cooperative relationships. The carnivorous plants are straightforward – it’s an advantage to be able to catch your own organic fertiliser. A number of lineages did that, and evolved into different directions which differentiated into new species over time.
These lovely rosettes are sundews (Drosera spp), of which there are many different species. Some are rosettes, other filigreed climbers. The rosette varieties tend to throw up one central flower sometime in spring, usually white. If you look closely, you will see “dewdrops” at the ends of fine hairs. These are sticky secretions with digestive enzymes. Midges and other small insects are caught like on flypaper and digested in situ. The minerals are absorbed through the leaves.
We were now mostly in coastal heathlands with clumps of stunted eucalypts, and could see the edges of the coast.
At this point we reached a track turning that made a good lunch stop.
Behind Brett is an access track that looks like it might be worth exploring in future years, as this is such a lovely area.
Both the Bibbulmun and the Nuyts tracks turned left at this point. This was the view ahead.
We sat under a tree at the track intersection and had slices of “dog food” – nicknamed thusly because it has rice and animal protein like a dog kibble and is a fairly complete food. It’s actually a baked rice slice with tuna, cheese, egg, yoghurt, spring onion and cracked pepper. Even the dog likes it, of course.
And then we were off again for the second half of the trip to Thompson Cove.
We found an ants’ nest with a quite spectacular ground cover next to it.
There was a strange denuded area that ran right and left of the track at one point. It is really tempting to blame humans for that; must’ve done something…
In the distance in the picture below is one of those famous blackboy flower spikes that looks like a long spear held aloft.
If you get photographed in front of one, it gives the impression of having an exotic over-the-top hairstyle.
We were heading for that coastal headland in the distance that is just creeping over the horizon.
We got to a lovely large stand of banksias. These are highly susceptible to the imported pathogen Phytophthoracinnamomi; this was still a dieback-free area. Many banksias have been killed in Australian conservation areas by the spread of this disease.
And then we could smell the ocean we were rapidly approaching.
At the Thompson cove turn-off, we saw that the track would take us down a steep V-shaped valley with a stream running through its centre. This was fun to walk, sort of like a place in a child’s adventure story from the time of Enid Blyton or before, when many Western children still routinely went to interesting natural places on foot or by bicycle. It is extraordinary how this has changed in a very few generations; now most Western children grow up like battery chickens in suburbia, usually cooped up indoors, and in severe nature deficit. The world population has more than tripled since Enid Blyton wrote her stories, and much of that extra population has been crammed into cities. This isn’t fair on children, or on the wild places that have been exterminated in order to grow the human population further into overshoot – or for that matter on the wild places that remain and don’t have the love and respect of those children.
And there was Thompson’s Cove (which should of course have a Noongar name, since Thompson was not the first person to encounter it).
Little teensy coves like this are scattered along the South Coast in-between the bigger coves and bays. It is always a pleasure to discover them in your own life during a long walk. I am one of those people who believes coves like this should only be reachable on foot, though of course, the mainstream is trying to “improve accessibility” for the disabled (which I can understand) but mostly for the lazy who think it’s too much effort to get fit and walk on your own two feet. This is why more and more habitat is being bulldozed for 4WD access, and more and more remote beaches are churned up as members of Homo colossus treat them like their private demolition derby tracks, scare the wildlife off them and leave their rubbish and excrement behind everywhere.
Places that are only accessible on foot on long walks tend along our South Coast to still be free from the tide of plastic rubbish that is choking the natural world. It’s funny how the hikers tend to be a different type of person to the 4WD-ing general public – and in Australia, the majority of people who can afford the loans now drive 4WD and SUV. These monstrosities now outnumber erstwhile “normal” cars on our roads. This is one reason the fuel efficiency of the average car on the road hasn’t improved in Australia since the 1970s. Meanwhile, the population of the country more than doubled, and an even bigger percentage of that bigger population now drive cars, neatly demonstrating that both skyrocketing population and increasing consumption per capita are killing our planet.
We found no rubbish in Thompson Cove and I do not need to tell you how rare an experience that is becoming. It’s also likely that the kind of hikers who visit here would pick up any rubbish they see in a place like this and carry it out. And this is a good time to mention Melissa from our online group, who does exactly this at Lake Tahoe in America.♥
We sat down to have afternoon tea on the side of this cove: Slices of home-made pecan pie and slugs of hot tea from thermoses.
Southern Ocean seas are massive this time of year; the waves crashed spectacularly over the rocky points. Across the water, far away, only Antarctica. So, there is a wide fetch that the Roaring Forties can work into a frenzy.
In a cove like this, you have to take off your boots to feel the sand beneath your feet.
And you have to bestow affection on the aging dog, who has been just the best dog ever the whole 10 years since we adopted her from a farm dog breed rescue when she was 9 months old and had been discarded by a Homo colossus into bushland far from any town to fend for herself (and I would like to do the same with her erstwhile owner). The ranger thankfully came across her, but she was still very skinny after being fed for a few weeks at the rescue.
There was a fair bit of upside-down wiggling and doggie laughing. We once caught that rigmarole on film at a hiking hut on the Nullaki Peninsula:
Occasionally you visit a place where you don’t just take off your boots in response, but your whole kit. It’s a bit like taking off your shoes when you visit a temple. It’s just that nature is the actual temple, and when you get to an unspoilt place like this where the temple has not been sullied, it’s an instinctive response to strip yourself down to your essence and to shed all the layers that civilisation has put on you – both clothing and metaphor.
We thought about including some spontaneous black-and-white photographs of bare backsides and the sea in this actual report – just like in National Geographic articles on members of other cultures than Homo colossus which still survive in small pockets around the world and practice their traditions. However, those didn’t turn out, and those that did – well, we weren’t going to inflict anything full frontal on our audience, for various reasons, although it would have led to an extended rant on the current fashion for infantilising adult females by getting them to remove their pubic hair, something that has astonished me for a long time. I don’t partake in that, thank you very much – I like having a bush, and pubic hair has several useful functions, one of which – friction reduction on delicate bits of undercarriage – should be fairly obvious to anyone who spends a lot of time hiking; but it seems some people prefer to take off what nature has kindly provided, and then use products with names like Anti Monkey Butt, which will help keep our economy rolling etc.
Then yours truly and lovely husband retraced our steps up the steep valley around the little stream that pours into the sea at this location.
Halfway up there was a flat area where other visitors had put on a camp fire recently.
This was the view back to the cove. This really is an incredible place.
We have a few more photos from the return trip; here’s a group of vistas taken from near the banksia grove in the vicinity of the track turning where we had had our lunch earlier.
Back at the track turning, we had a rehydration stop. The dog has her own bottle when we go to places there isn’t plentiful fresh water.
Beautiful large Karri tree that has been there since before I was born; and these days, that’s saying something. I now keep age-related matters simple by rounding myself up to the nearest 100.
Even a tree hollow is its own universe. Everything in nature is like one of those Matryoshka dolls – layers and layers and layers, except each layer is unlike the one before. You could find more layers going up closer, over and over until you end up with subatomic particles and energy and space, and the further mysteries of that. Or you could zoom out, to the tree, to its immediate neighbourhood, to the forest, to the regional biosphere, to the continent, and go up and up until you were in amongst the stars looking down at the beautiful, fragile, once blue-green planet floating like a marble in space. And you could go further out until you are in the Horsehead Nebula, and then some.
Meanwhile Homo colossus is focusing on its toys, status, drama and political cycles, busy obliterating the biosphere of that fragile marble so that its investment portfolios can grow, ho hum, pass the butter.
I really hope this eucalyptus seedling grows into a hundred-year-old tree…
More beautiful little universes. How anyone could on reflection think them worth trading for the universal dross of Homo colossus is beyond me.
And this concluded our Nuyts Wilderness hike, for this day. The old dog had enjoyed herself and was looking forward to a decent meal, followed by curling up on her sofa at home.
Thank you for joining us on our hike and our reflections. We hope you have enjoyed the photographs of this beautiful wilderness area that we wanted to bring back for those of you who are in different parts of the world, and that you can feel that a part of you has now been there too.♥
All the pictures in the post are taken by Brett and Susanne Coulstock
A Note of Gratitude
At the end of the year 2023, we would like to thank all of our supporters. Your constant support, by any means that you can, has helped us to do our part in defense of the natural world. Thank you!
Also, at this moment, we would like to inform you that there had been some technical glitch in our normal donation server. We would like to humbly thank our donors for bringing that to our notice. For those of you it has inconvenienced, we would like to sincerely apologize and inform you that we have set up a temporary donation site for that purpose: https://givebutter.com/SA0iCU
The municipality of Itogon in Benguet province, in the northern Philippines has been dubbed a “gold haven” for its massive deposits of the precious metal. Image by Michael Beltran for Mongabay.
Signs opposing ISRI’s mining plans, such as this one outside a small-scale mining facility, dot the town of Dalicno in the northern Philippines. Image by Michael Beltran for Mongabay.
Small scale mines like this one support the modest lives of many villagers in Itogon. Image by Michael Beltran for Mongabay.
Dalicno elder Cristeta Caytap says she fears industrial-scale mining will contaminate the local water supply. Image by Michael Beltran for Mongabay.
Allan Sabaiano, head of the Dalicno Indigenous Peoples Organization (DIPO), in striped shirt, with a map of mining in Itogon municipality. Image by Michael Beltran for Mongabay.
Inside one of the many small-scale mining facilities that pepper the hills of Itogon province. Image by Michael Beltran for Mongabay.
While Dalicno elders describe small-scale mining as a community act, ISRI’s manager points to unregulated small-scale mining as a significant source of environmental degradation. Image by Michael Beltran for Mongabay.
Community activists in Dalicno hold a banner protesting ISRI’s mining expansion plans. Image by Michael Beltran for Mongabay.
This is a map of the ghastly 2023 Jindalee exploration plan to punch in 267 new drill hole and sump sites and construct 30 miles of new roads. It would fragment an area with a very high density of nesting sagebrush songbirds of all kinds. Birds like Sagebrush Sparrow require continuous blocks of dense mature or old growth big sagebrush. Jindalee boasts its consultant environmental and cultural studies have found “no show-stoppers” and “no red flags”. Industry gets the results it wants when it pays for mine consultant work. Federal and state agencies, after a bit of pro forma sniping, acquiesce to what the mine comes up with.
I stopped, got out and approached a security guard who appeared at the truck. He refused to let me pass. After several minutes of my insistent repetition that this was a public road, the BLM mine EIS said this road would always be open, and that blocking use of this road indicated the EIS, the BLM and Lithium Americas had lied, the security guard relented and said he would call the head of security.
The boss pulled up in a white truck as a sudden rain whirlwind bore down. His face was obscured, and identity concealed by a tan balaclava-like hood and dark sunglasses. When he first arrived, he got out of his truck and pointed a camera device at me. I thought WTF is this – a security firm mercenary decked out for Operation Iraqi Freedom? Abu Ghraib in Orovada? I again repeated repeatedly that this was a public access road, and I was going up into the Montana Mountains to camp. He retreated to his pickup, likely to run me and my license plates through some creepy database. Finally, I was allowed to pass through.
LNC’s drill scarring is a mere prelude to the destruction that’s planned – 5,694 acres of outright destruction in a 17,933 acre project zone. The enormity and scale of the planned mine is mind boggling – a deep open pit, a waste rock pile, all types of infrastructure, a lithium smelter/sulfuric acid plant on-site using huge volumes of waste sulfur shipped into a new railroad off-loading site by the Winnemucca airport. The latter was just announced a few months ago, to the dismay of nearby residents who find themselves facing living by a hazardous materials zone. Hundreds of tons of off-loaded material will be trucked to Thacker Pass and burned every day in a plant whose air scrubber design wasn’t even finalized before the Thacker decision was signed by BLM. What stink and toxic pollution will this lithium processing generate? McDermitt caldera soils contain uranium and mercury. Mine water use is estimated to be 1.7 billion gallons annually. Enormous volumes of diesel fuel will be used throughout the mine’s operation. What’s green about all this?
Sacrificing the Interior West for Corporate Energy Dominance While Energy Conservation Lags or Is Forgotten Altogether
I’m outraged at the ecocidal stupidity with which this “energy transition” is being carried out. Will we soon see Jindalee get US tax dollars to wipe out the McDermitt Creek Sage-grouse stronghold? How ironic that would be. Interior just announced funding for major sagebrush habitat restoration using Infrastructure Bill funds in High Priority sagebrush areas. It turns out one of the sites chosen is the Montana Mountains area. Mapping shows it includes the Thacker Pass mine area too, where nearly all the sage is on the verge of being destroyed by LNC. Close review of maps for Interior’s Montana “restoration” project shows it encompasses the McDermitt Creek watershed, hence the entire area coveted by Jindalee for massive new drilling followed by open pit mining. It would be absurd to greenlight Jindalee’s ghastly exploration plan in primo habitat, when the Interior Department has identified this very same landscapeto be among the highest priority for restoration – because so much sage has already been lost already. The caldera is also key for connectivity between Sheldon and Owyhee Sage-grouse populations and for biodiversity preservation.
