Amazon Aluminium Part 1: Alligator on Ice

I’m flitting around the Amazon basin like a house fly in a hot kitchen to visit two major bauxite mines – one very new and one middle-aged – on the Amazon River to see for myself their forest restoration work. The former is ALCOA’s Juruti mine and the latter, the subject of this blog posting, is MRN’s Trombetas mine, on the north bank of the Amazon.

The Amazon River somewhere en route to Porto Trombetas

Milena, an MRN forest engineer, meets me off the plane at Porto Trombetas’ small, rustic airport, fabricated from jungle logs and, incongruously, sporting an artificial Christmas tree. In an overly air-conditioned bus, we are driven to the mine’s purpose-built town. Much of the architecture is of 1970’s style with mature trees and gardens. Before the mine and its necessary infrastructure were created over 30 years ago, there was nothing here but pristine forest and a very small village of people of mainly African descent. Today there is a large surface mine and a mining town of a few thousand people and has generated billions for the Brazilian economy.



I finally meet Domingos, with whom I have been corresponding for many months in the lead up to this visit. He is Alcoa’s environmental manager for Latin America and the Caribbean and earns a great deal of air miles every year. Both Domingos and Milena are hosting my visit to the world’s largest bauxite mine. After donning the obligatory, and stifling, health and safety clothing we subject each other to mutual Powerpoint presentations in the oldest building in Trombetas – the original mine office, now serving as a museum/ education centre.

Bauxite, or aluminium ore, is usually red- brown and around here is found just a few metres below the surface in expanses covering hundreds of square kilometres. (A Bosnian geologist once explained to me that to test for bauxite you touch the suspect mineral with your tongue. If it is bauxite, the mineral absorbs your tongue’s moisture and sticks to it in an instant! He didn’t tell me how to remove it without flaying your tongue though!).

This kind of bauxite is easy to mine. First the forest is cleared by bulldozer with commercially-valuable timber stockpiled until authorisation is received for its transportation. Then the topsoil (about 50cm thick) and overlying rock (8-12m thick) are scraped off and stored for later use in reclamation. Now the red bauxite ore is exposed and excavated and taken for subsequent treatment. Each activity occurs in separate strips, hence the name strip mining, with the overburden removed from the latest strip being deposited in the previous strip from which the ore was extracted. This is then covered the topsoil and is followed by tree-planting. From the air, the mining area forms a perfect red rectangle cut from the green forest blanket (see the Google Map link in the right hand column).

The mining area before the green wall: right bulldozer extracting red bauxite; left bulldozer replacing yellow overburden

The process of restoring the rainforest in the mining areas begins before the actual mining starts. Wildlife monitoring is set-up two-years before, and continues during, forest clearance. Immediately before clearance, a wildlife rescue team is sent in employing trained local contractors to rescue slow-moving animals, such as sloths and tortoises, important plant species such as orchids and the nests of stingless bees, which are vital for the pollination of many forest plants, including trees. These are translocated to previously restored forest areas.

Frozen delights!

The company runs an animal hospital (although Rolf Harris was nowhere to be seen) to deal with injured animals. In the midday heat I am taken to a chest freezer from which I expect to be handed a refreshing an ice cream. Silly me! Milena opens it to extract a frozen baby alligator from a veritable menagerie of icy reptiles and parrots. These animals have been accidentally killed in one way or another in the local area and are, apparently, waiting to be collected by a taxidermist. A less macarbre collection saved from the forest is of the orchids (of which Domingos is a big fan) and other epiphytic plants, currently being stored in the nursery. Many of the plants here are recognizable as typical British house plants, except here they are outside and invariably look much healthier.

Bromeliad

Orchid

The ultimate goal of the forest restoration team is to produce a new jungle, eventually, as close to the original as possible. They have made steady progress in this over the past 30 plus years, based on careful research and experimentation. Of the 180 tree species found in the diverse local forest, 100 are chosen for replanting, based on their speed of growth for soil protection, their ability to attract fauna (through fruit and flower production) importing seeds from outside area, and use to people – fruit and nut production, medicinal use, timber, etc. A favourite, for economic reasons, is the Brazil nut tree. Twelve local village families assist in collecting seeds and raising seedlings to augment the half a million produced every year by MRN’s own nursery. Around 70 local people are employed to plant the trees during the wet season.

I was shown every stage of the mining and restoration activity and all my questions were readily answered. Although this hot, wet and humid climate is not ideal for someone from the north of England it does provide excellent conditions for growing a new jungle. Within a couple of years the trees are above head height and the canopy is closing. This means light-loving weeds are shaded out and forest understorey plants can get a toe-hold. Also, new trees are coming in, spread in the guts of animals attracted to the newly planted forest areas.

Tree-planting area just five years old - they were less than knee height when planted. (Note black lower leg guards against snake bites!)

Stingless bees' nests in log sections from recently cleared areas

Since 1981 when reforestation began MRN’s people have planted over nine million trees, covering four and a half thousand previously mined hectares. To the casual observer the oldest planted areas are becoming indistinguishable from the rest of the forest, although Milena and her team are not satisfied; their numerous indicators of success tells her that the forest is around 70% there – not good enough in her books. We are taken around the very first forest that was restored in the early 1980s where the translocated stingless bees' nests are buzzing happily, epiphytes have been reintroduced from more recent cleared areas and a Brazil nut tree is already a 40 metre giant around which my gibbon-like my arms don’t reach.

Brazil nut; top of the tree reaching 40 metres, planted in the mid-1980s

Brazil nut; bottom of the tree - tree hugger!

Bizarrely, the need for mining and the desire for wild places are often intertwined by accidents of geology and geography. My natural reaction to the destruction of these wonderfully uncomfortable and stimulating jungle places is sadness, but not anger, because equally uplifting is the effort expended by genuinely concerned, talented people to regrow these forests and provide new opportunities for local people.