AL JAZEERA (3/10/2021)
At dawn, blue and pink rays start to break over Dana’s mountain ridges. Birdsong and rustling leaves are the only sounds in the valley.
Spread over 300sq km (116sq miles) from towering sandstone cliffs to desert plains, the Dana Biosphere Reserve is Jordan’s largest and most diverse protected region but its days of quiet and natural beauty may be numbered.
The Jordanian government, claiming there are an estimated 45 million tonnes of copper in Dana, says it’s going to mine in the area.
The prospect of seeing his beloved hills blasted to extract copper and the valleys turned into a mound of waste rock fills Abdulrahman Ammarin with dread.
“The excavations will ruin the area we were protecting for so many years,” he told Al Jazeera.
For the past 20 years, he has worked as a ranger with the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN), a non-governmental organisation running Jordan’s reserves. But his Bedouin tribe has guarded this rugged landscape for centuries.
Ammarin, who lives near the reserve, worries not only about the irreversible damage the mining might cause to his region, but also the impact it could have on his family and community. “The pollution will affect all of us,” he says.
Pointing to a nearby desert acacia, Jibril Ammarin, also a ranger from the region, starts listing the diverse types of trees and vegetation that can be found in the reserve. “We have junipers, oak and pistachio trees, date palms,” he says.
Established in 1989, the reserve is home to more than 800 different species of plants and 215 species of birds, representing about one-third of Jordan’s plant species and half of all the bird species. Some are considered threatened and a few of them can only be found in Dana.
The rangers say a mining project would destroy the land, drive away animals, and could contaminate the water and soil.
In August, the government tasked the environment ministry with carving out a portion of the reserve to allow copper prospection and extraction on – and to form a committee to look for new land to replace the areas that would be mined.
The exact area to be expropriated, said to range anywhere between 60 to 106 sq km, is still under negotiation but the plan has sparked outrage and has been heavily criticised by conservationists and environmental activists (…)
Read more: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/3/copper-mine-threatens-jordans-largest-nature-reserve