African Wildlife & Environment Issue 79

FAUNA, FLORA & WILDLIFE

One needs to understand what surface-, open pit- or strip-mining entails to get the full picture.These types of mining destroy landscapes, bushveld savannah and wildlife habitats at the site of the mine when trees, plants,and topsoil are cleared from the area to be mined. This in turn leads to massive amounts of soil erosion and general destruction of natural land. Wind and rain will carry away the loosened top soil into the air or wash it into drainage lines, where it will create large sediment loads. Underground mining with shafts and all the related infrastructure is much more expensive and considered more dangerous. Surface mining, however, is far cheaper, and you can recover far more of the resource in a much shorter time period, because you can use larger-scale mining equipment and it is much safer for humans in this controlled environment. Unfortunately, this financial and health and safety saving comes with a much higher environmental cost, because the

The public participation meeting to present and receive comments related to the Draft Environmental Assessment (DEIR), and the Integrated Water and Waste Management Plan (IWWMP) reports, pertinent to the Mining Right application over land in the Gravelotte district, was held on 20 February 2021 in Gravelotte, by the Environmental Assessment Practitioners (EAPs) contracted by Tiara Mining. I attended, along with other landowners from SGR, where we were informed in some detail of what was proposed with the strip-mining claim on a large portion (10,500 ha) of the SGR. I was horrified at the dismissive attitude shown by the presenters, and their total lack of empathy for the environment. It appeared that they were not even aware of the 28,500 ha SGR with all its incredible biodiversity and other attributes. It got me thinking about similar scenarios that have happened historically and how they were dealt with.

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