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Professor Kingsley Dixon warns that lithium mining will cause irreversible damage to the region’s forests.
Mining will devastate forest says expert You cannot reinstate the forest after mining. L That is clear. eading environmental scientist Professor Kingsley Dixon is adamant that lithium mining in the Dalgarup forest would destroy the internationally recognised biodiversity hotspot. He says that Alcoa’s destruction of the jarrah forest in its quest for bauxite should serve as a warning against lithium mining in the 321 square kilometres of forest currently being sought for exploration licenses. “You cannot reinstate the forest after mining. That is clear. It is an ancient forest with complexities that we cannot solve,” Professor Dixon said. “We weren’t able to solve them when we started working on forest restoration almost 40 years ago in Kings Park. “We still can’t solve lots of species we can’t get back, and we can’t get the processes to give us back the forest that we all love, which is great old trees, hollows with black cockatoos in them, wonderful big grass trees and zamia palms, which are all things that can live up to 300 years. “These all vanish with mining, and you’ve just got to hope somehow, someday in the next very long while, someone comes up with a solution.
“In a nutshell, when you mine the jarrah forest, it is a loss of that jarrah forest. It’s not going to come back.” Exploration damage He said that even the exploration phase has an environmental impact, with big machinery drilling holes, land clearing, and the danger of spreading dieback. While exploration companies claim to comply with environmental standards for cleaning machinery to prevent dieback spread, “you have to trust them”. “They all claim to operate those standards, but there are no regulators standing at a gate checking them for adhering soil or plant material that might bring the disease in.” In ecological terms the area is still largely unexplored, according to Professor Dixon. “The whole of the forest, has really not been adequately investigated in scientific terms.
Unknown Complexity “We just don’t understand the complexity across this whole forest ecosystem. “The further you get away from the population centres, the more it’s unknown, and likely to have all sorts of unique species, ecosystems and processes going on. “It’s just a matter that we don’t have skills and the ability to do those identifications, and to understand, and we haven’t even started on the bulk of the animals, which are things such as the invertebrates, all the insects and stuff.” He said that the region potentially had more plant species than the whole of England. He’s adamant that open cut lithium mines can’t be rehabilitated with current technology and the impact on surrounding areas will be severe. CONTINUED PAGE 3