Great apes threatened by mining for electric vehicle batteries
A surge of mining in some African countries for materials used to make green energy technologies puts gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos at risk
By Madeleine Cuff
3 April 2024
The noise pollution, habitat loss and disease spillover that can come with mining could threaten chimpanzee populations in some countries in Africa
Ari Wid/Shutterstock
More than a third of the great apes living in Africa are under threat from the booming demand for minerals that are critical to the creation of green energy technologies, such as electric vehicles.
Africa is home to around one sixth of the world’s remaining forests, with the habitat found in countries such as Ghana, Gabon and Uganda. The continent also houses four great ape species: chimpanzees, bonobos and two species of gorilla.
But many of these great apes live in regions eyed by mining firms as potential sites to extract commodities. For instance, more than 50 per cent of the world’s reserves of cobalt and manganese are found in Africa, and 22 per cent of its graphite.
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How did Paranthropus, the last of the ape-people, survive for so long?
To assess the scale of the threat to great ape populations, Jessica Junker, formerly at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research and now at the non-profit conservation group Re:wild in Austin, Texas, and her colleagues overlaid the location of operational and planned mining sites across 17 African countries with available data on the density and distribution of ape populations.
The team drew a 50 kilometre “buffer zone” around mining sites, to account both for their direct impacts on ape populations, such as noise pollution, habitat loss and disease spillover, as well as indirect disturbances, such as the construction of new service roads and infrastructure.
