The pioneers in progressive mine rehabilitation is one of the greatest assets in departmentalizing mining stereotypes. Environmentally friendly procedures and more and more miscellaneous ecosystems are becoming the standard as companies regard local ecosystem rehabilitation as a part of the on-going mining process.
To better understand these progressive rehab techniques, here are some words from Idemitsu Australia Resources Corporate Sustainability and Environment Manager Dr. Jan Green and Parsons Brinckerhoff Team Manager, Alex Cockerill.
“There’s an increasing focus on establishing complex and diverse natural ecosystems as part of mine rehabilitation,” she says. “With progressive rehab, it takes a much shorter time after the mine closes before the original flora and fauna can take over naturally.”
Her existing project is a 6- to 7-year-old mine that will sooner or later go back to a box gum woodland with white box gum trees. She explains that one of the biggest challenges is keeping up with the mining as it happens.
A strict schedule of clearing between summer and autumn allows species, for example, to nest in the winter and raise young in the spring. Cockerill says the team salvages hollow logs and timber for the provision of supplementary fauna habitats within the rehabilitation, and collects the seeds of local species of plant from the adjoining forest for propagation in a nursery.
By means of local species, it provides them a bette...
