Threat to great apes from mining for electric car batteries

More than a third of Africa's great apes are threatened by soaring demand for minerals essential to creating green energy technologies such as electric vehicles.

Africa has about one-sixth of the world's remaining forests, and its habitat is in countries such as Ghana, Gabon, and Uganda. The continent is also home to his four species of great apes: chimpanzees, bonobos, and two gorillas.

However, many of these great apes live in areas that mining companies are eyeing as potential places to extract goods. for example, More than 50 percent of the world's cobalt and manganese reserves are found in Africa22 percent of graphite.

To assess the scale of the threat to great ape populations, Jessica Juncker Researchers at Re:wild, a non-profit conservation organization in Austin, Texas, analyzed available data on the location of operating and planned mines and the density and distribution of great ape populations across 17 African countries. Superimposed.

The research team considered both direct impacts on great ape populations, such as noise pollution, habitat loss, and disease spillover, as well as indirect disturbances, such as building new service roads, to A 50km “buffer zone” was created around the area. And infrastructure.

A total of 180,000 great apes, just over a third of the continent's population, may be threatened by mining activities, researchers have found.

The West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, Mali, and Guinea had the greatest overlap between great ape populations and mining sites. In Guinea, a study found that 83 percent of the great ape population could be affected by mining.

Juncker said the team was only considering industrial mining projects. The threat may be even greater when considering the impact of man-made mines, where miners typically work in primitive and often dangerous environments.

Cobalt, manganese, and graphite are all used to make lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles. Other materials found in these countries, such as bauxite, platinum, copper, graphite, and lithium, are used to power hydrogen, wind turbines, solar panels, and other green technologies.

Juncker argues that companies should stop mining in areas important to great apes and instead focus on recycling these important materials from waste. “There is great potential in metal reuse,” she says. “All we need to do is consume more sustainably. Then it will be possible to leave at least some of the areas that are so important to great apes intact.”

She is also calling on mining companies to publicly conduct biodiversity assessments of potential mining sites. “Increasing transparency is the first step.”