Green Gold: One of World's Richest Biological Treasure Troves is Also
Home to Mother Lode of Minerals
5/27/99
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Green Gold: One of World's Richest Biological Treasure
Troves is Also Home to Mother Lode of Minerals
Source: Far Eastern Economic Review
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: May 27, 1999
Byline: Dan Murphy
David Norris was hauling a boatload of dead sea snakes along an
unnamed river as darkness fell and a nasty storm began to spill out
from the Arafura Sea. The tribesman helping out on the boat was
already terrified by the lightning, which he blamed on evil spirits.
Then they came across something that scared them both out of their
wits: The crown of an isolated mangrove ablaze with a
ghostly light.
"It was like the burning bush of Joshua," recalls Norris, who
eventually made it home with his specimens intact. "Whether it was a
colony of glowing insects or phosphorescent fungus, we'll never
know." Just another day in the trackless mangrove swamps of southwest
Irian Jaya, the Indonesian province on New Guinea's western half.
After a hundred years of fascination and frustration, one of the
wildest places left on earth is finally yielding up its secrets to
science. Why?
The answer lies with Norris's employer -- Freeport McMoRan Copper &
Gold of New Orleans, Louisiana. It also lies with the mountain that
towers nearly 13,500 feet above that malaria- and crocodile-infested
swamp in the glacier-capped Sudirman range, a $50 billion hunk of
rock called the Grasberg that holds the world's richest copper and
gold deposit.
For nearly two decades, Freeport has conducted a vast -- and
according to its critics, hugely destructive -- mining operation in
one of world's richest and least-explored environments. On the
mountain's eastern border lies the Lorentz National Park, an
unexplored 2.5-million-hectare expanse -- roughly the size of the
U.S. state of Vermont -- that is expected to be added to the United
Nations' list of World Heritage sites by the end of the year.
Inclusion will mean more international money for protection and
scientific documentation. "Its biotic richness and diversity is
beyond compare," the World Wide Fund for Nature wrote in a 1998 brief
urging that the park be placed on the World Heritage list. Some
scientists believe the area outranks the Amazon and the Congo for
density of unique species, thanks to a combination of genetic
isolation, climate and a dramatic change in elevation.
"It's a unique situation: You're going from sea level to glaciers in
just 78 miles and it's all on the equator," says Howard Lewis,
Freeport's environmental manager. That 78 miles spans tropical seas,
mangrove swamps, freshwater swamps, lowland jungle and highland cloud
forest, each habitat with its own complex of interlocking ecosystems
and rare species.
In response to a rancorous environmental campaign and tighter
Indonesian government regulations, Freeport has sought to improve its
environmental image, spending $40 million annually on environmental
monitoring and tailings management. It has also funded the first
comprehensive survey of the region's biological riches in the last
three years. Scientists from organizations like the Smithsonian
Institute and the Bishop Museum in Hawaii have worked on the
project. The results have been spectacular: Researchers discovered a
large new mammal -- a type of tree-kangaroo -- as well as hundreds of
previously unknown fish, amphibians, plants and insects.
But the access Freeport has created also poses the greatest long-term
threat to the region's vast biological treasures. "Without Freeport's
presence we wouldn't know half as much about one of the most
important natural places left on earth. But if they weren't there, it
would be a lot easier to protect," says Agustinus Rumansara, head of
the World Wide Fund for Nature's Irian Jaya programme. Rumansara says
Freeport has done a better job in recent years, but warns that the
future of the local environment is no longer in the company's hands.
Protecting the area's biological richness now depends on the
Indonesian government's ability and willingness to restrict this
human activity to a small sphere, and in particular, its ability to
keep the Lorentz Park sacrosanct. "The impacts from the mine can
ultimately be contained," says Kent Hortle, a Freeport biologist.
"It's the influx of man that's so difficult to control," agrees the
WWF's Rumansara.
The $4 billion Freeport has poured into infrastructure in a formerly
pristine wilderness has created a surreal toehold for man in what was
once among the most hostile places on earth. Settlers from Sulawesi
drive cabs around Timika, the town closest to the mine and foreigners
dine on seafood, including an as yet unnamed species of mud crab, at
local cafes. The families of foreign miners play golf on an 18-hole
course designed by Masters champion Ben Crenshaw.
The population of greater Timika has surged from less than 6,000
people a decade ago to 70,000 today, and new migrants arrive daily.
Many of the newcomers are engaged in illegal logging and harvesting
of forest products, often in cooperation with the military, which
runs a number of wildcat logging operations and monopolizes the trade
of some forest products. Every time a new road is cut, new settlers
piggyback into a pristine area. Hunting by natives is made easier.
The modern world has rolled in with breathtaking speed. When
geologist Jean Jacques Dozy discovered ore here in 1939, he thought
it would never be mined, "like a mountain of gold on the moon." In
1912, a British Ornithological Union team fought incessant rain,
beriberi disease and supply problems for 15 months in a failed
attempt to reach the snow-clad peaks, a tantalizing 100 kilometres
from shore. Only 15 of an initial 400 men saw the expedition to
its end. A.F.R. Wollaston, who survived the trip, predicted his
successors would "fly daily into the heart of New Guinea where they will find
things undreamt of now." He was right.
Kew Gardens botanist Bob Johns is one of Wollaston's successors.
Cruising the mangroves in a Freeport boat, he excitedly shouts for a
halt and scrambles over the side. With evil-smelling mud clutching at
his boots, Johns stumbles to a tree and begins struggling with a
football-sized bubo protruding from the trunk. "A Rubicae Mymocodia,"
he says with delight, oblivious to the fierce red ants pouring out
from the plant and onto his arm. It is, he explains, an "ant plant,"
which clings to mangroves and provides homes for ants in its hollow
bulb. The ants, in turn, protect the plant from other insects.
He's ambivalent about working with a mining company but says the
allure of the region proved too strong to resist. "Irian Jaya is the
least described area on earth. I'm delighted to be here because of
the infrastructure and the resources. It would be massively more
expensive to operate here if the mine wasn't here. Permits would be
impossible."
The local tribes' feelings about the developments of the past 30
years are mixed. Certainly, many native Irianese regard Indonesia as
a colonial power. The UN transferred the former Dutch colony to
Indonesia in 1963. Dispossessed of their lands and marginalized by
development, the tribes resent both Freeport and the Indonesian
government. Over the years, the Indonesian military has tortured and
killed civilians in the area because of their separatist sympathies,
their opposition to Freeport, or both.
But they also appreciate the benefits that modernity can bring --
particularly medicine and education, as well as some employment.
Typical is Amungme leader Tom Beanal, who leads Lemasa, the most
organized native pressure group. He feels Freeport and the government
have stripped his people of their land and cites a host of
complaints, from the military's torture and murder of natives to the
fact that the mountain Freeport is tearing down is sacred to his
people.
But in the end Beanal isn't anti-mining. He just wants a better deal
and more control. "We need traditional land rights to be recognized,
we need the Indonesian military to withdraw, and the environmental
practices of the mine to be improved," says Lemasa official Wilhelmus
Pigai.
Defining land rights and borders aren't just tricky issues for local
tribes. They also hold the key to the future of Lorentz. The lava
flows bearing copper and gold that seeped into the Grasberg 3 million
years ago also flowed in the park, and Freeport geologists say aerial
mapping and past surveys have identified attractive targets.
Prospecting has been done on what is now defined as park land, and
Freeport holds exploration permits on park ground, though the status
of those sites is subject to government review.
For everyone who works in and cares about the region, each day is a
mix between elation and fear of the future. Kew Garden's Johns says
he's found as many as 60 unnamed fern species. The danger is that
almost as soon as they are discovered, the rising tide of humanity
will begin to pose a threat to their survival. As a long-time
consultant to Freeport asks: "Do you think all those people are just
going to disappear the day the mine closes?"