Mining for minerals and metals essential to a clean energy future may have unprecedented impacts on apes.
Areas with high densities of great apes—including gorillas, bonobos, and chimpanzees—significantly overlap with the locations of African mines for these minerals, according to a new paper in the journal Science Advances. This puts one-third of all remaining apes in Africa at risk.
In West Africa, in particular, around 80 percent of apes live within 19.3 square miles of mining operations.
"Our study reveals that up to one-third of Africa's great ape population faces potential risks from mining activities, indicating an underestimated threat magnitude," study author Jessica Junker, a researcher at Re:wild and former researcher at iDiv and MLU, told Newsweek.
"The highest spatial overlaps between mining projects and critical ape habitats were found in West Africa, with over 80 percent of the western chimpanzee population at risk. Conversely, central Africa showed the largest impact in terms of affected individuals, totaling over 130,000."
Primates are one of the most threatened groups of animals, with 67 percent worldwide and 73 percent in Africa listed as at least threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. Great apes are a group of primates that include gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees and bonobos (as well as humans), all of which are currently listed as either Endangered or Critically Endangered in the wild.
This study, written by researchers from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the non-profit conservation organization Re:wild, shows that mining for minerals including copper, lithium, nickel, and cobalt across 17 African nations may be affecting these apes much more than previously thought.
The researchers looked at the locations of mining sites across these countries and defined a 6.2-mile buffer zone around each mining site as being affected by direct impacts such as deforestation, noise pollution and habitat destruction. A further 31-mile zone was defined as likely being affected by indirect impacts of the mines, such as new roads and infrastructure being built, leading to increased impacts on the apes from hunting, habitat loss and disease.
"The threats posed by mining to great apes are multifaceted, encompassing direct dangers such as habitat destruction, fragmentation, and degradation, as well as indirect risks associated with mining operations and the influx of individuals seeking economic opportunities, leading to heightened hunting pressure and increased disease transmission risks," Junker said.
They then created species density distribution projections using the IUCN Species Survival Commission's Ape Populations, Environments and Surveys (A.P.E.S.) database and compared them to the mining impact zones.
They found that in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Mali, and Guinea, apes were worst affected by the mines, with a huge proportion of their population being found within the smaller and larger zones. Eighty-three percent of the apes in Guinea, numbering around 23,000, could be at direct and indirect risk from mining activity.
"Currently, studies on other species suggest that mining harms apes through pollution, habitat loss, increased hunting pressure, and disease, but this is an incomplete picture," Junker said in a statement.
"The lack of data sharing by mining projects hampers our scientific understanding of its true impact on great apes and their habitat."
The researchers also found that there was a 20 percent overlap between mining areas and regions considered 'Critical Habitats" for their biodiversity outside of the ape population. Additionally, only 3 percent of mine land maps contain any A.P.E.S information, and 1 percent of ape survey data in A.P.E.S comes from mining companies.
"Companies operating in these areas should have adequate mitigation and compensation schemes in place to minimize their impact, which seems unlikely, given that most companies lack robust species baseline data that are required to inform these actions," study co-author Tenekwetche Sop, manager of the IUCN SSC A.P.E.S. Database at the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History, said in the statement.
"Encouraging these companies to share their invaluable ape survey data with our database serves as a pivotal step towards transparency in their operations. Only through such collaborative efforts can we comprehensively gauge the true extent of mining activities' effects on great apes and their habitats."
The researchers stress that the risks to apes likely stretch much further away from the mines than mining projects consider, leading to inaccurate and underestimated compensations or offsets by the mining companies. Additionally, these offsets usually have a lifespan of around 20 years, while these impacts on apes are likely to be permanent.
"Mining companies need to focus on avoiding their impacts on great apes as much as possible and use offsetting as a last resort as there is currently no example of a great ape offset that has been successful," co-author Genevieve Campbell, lead of the IUCN SSC PSG SGA/SSA ARRC Task Force and senior researcher at Re:wild, said in the statement.
"Avoidance needs to take place already during the exploration phase, but unfortunately, this phase is poorly regulated and 'baseline data' are collected by companies after many years of exploration and habitat destruction have taken place. These data then do not accurately reflect the original state of the great ape populations in the area before mining impacts."
The minerals are being used in a number of clean energy applications: Cobalt and lithium are essential in lithium-ion batteries, which are used in electric vehicles and energy storage systems for renewable energy sources like solar and wind, while copper is extensively used in renewable energy infrastructure, including wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles, and is a critical component in electrical wiring and motors.
Other minerals mined include rare earth elements like neodymium, dysprosium, and praseodymium, which are crucial in wind turbines and EV motors.
While the researchers recognize the importance of these minerals in achieving a future that relies less on fossil fuels, they note that mining practices as they are in Africa are destroying the very habitats that scientists are trying to protect.
"A shift away from fossil fuels is good for the climate but must be done in a way that does not jeopardize biodiversity. In its current iteration it may even be going against the very environmental goals we're aiming for," said Junker. "Companies, lenders and nations need to recognize that it may sometimes be of greater value to leave some regions untouched to mitigate climate change and help prevent future epidemics."
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