SLT Director Responds to Tough Question about "Good Mining" in Mongolia

We received a great question recently from Snow Leopard Trust member and donor Kurt Weideling, regarding our recent series of posts about mining in Mongolia. We imagine that other Trust members have had similar concerns, and Kurt has given us permission to post his exchange with Executive Director Brad Rutherford. Kurt’s question appears in green, and Brad’s response follows.

As a Snow Leopard trust donor and member I just wanted to respond to your latest email entitled ‘Fight mining in Mongolia’. Whilst I appreciate the motivation behind this campaign, I would strongly suggest that the overall tone is patronizing and inappropriate.

The fact is that mining, if conducted in an appropriate and controlled way, can be a excellent way for any country to generate revenue and achieve economic development. Some types of mining are more environmentally damaging than others (e.g. open cut), but the amount of land required for such projects represents only a tiny fraction available in Mongolia.

Rather than taking such a knee-jerk approach why not see it as an opportunity? Surely local people employed at a mine rather than as herders are less likely to see Snow leopards as a threat to their livelihood.

Having worked in the resources industry for several years in the past I can attest that there is a huge gulf between ‘good’ mining projects and ‘bad’ ones from an environmental and developmental perspective. Rather than slander the entire industry, why not work to ensure that any projects in Mongolia fall into the former category? Simply expecting a country to leave its valuable resources in the ground because of our interest in saving one species is unrealistic and unproductive.

Yours sincerely,

Kurt Weideling

Dear Kurt,

I wanted to write a quick note to say thank you for your support and, equally as important, thank you for your feedback on our recent email.

We constantly struggle with balancing the nuances of our work with the need for a concise message to our busy supporters and sometimes all the issues we are working on and weighing get lost. In addition to that we know that there are lots of issues that people care about and we want to put forward the most relevant issues to the most people possible. So I’m sorry our email missed the mark with you.

As you point out in your email there are well run mining operations and bad ones and there are appropriate and bad government policies on mining as well. In Kyrgyzstan we work with a Canadian gold mining operation and they have been very helpful in funding needed research and keeping areas free of poachers. We have also had terrible run ins with a China run mine in the same country that is doing incredible damage to the environment.

We are seeing similar issues in Mongolia where we’ve met with officials from the Rio Tinto mine and have started a good dialogue on possible ways to protect snow leopard habitat and have had less productive meetings with other mines.

The point we were attempting to make in our email is our alarm at the blanketing of our research site with exploration permits. Our issue is really with the Ministry and not the mining companies at this point and we are targeting our actions towards the Ministry.

Your point on the employment issues is interesting to us. So far the communities are actually not in favor of the mines and have requested the government to establish a community managed protected area. This has shocked us so far and I think it goes to your earlier point on good and bad mining operations. There have been several mines established in the area where most of the work has gone to workers from outside Mongolia which I think accounts for the lack of support. I don’t mean to stereotype but it appears the China owned mines have, to date, not won the support of Mongolian’s living around the mines.

So I’m sorry that the tone of our email missed the mark for you but I hope this helps explain a bit more on our approach and I also hope you’ve seen over the past years that the Snow Leopard Trust takes a “practical view” towards conservation. So if we can find communities or companies that will help us protect the environment we will try and partner with them to achieve our goals of protecting snow leopards and their habitat.

Please keep your feedback coming and let me know if I can provide more information on our programs or our approach.

Take care,

Brad Rutherford

Executive Director

Snow Leopard Trust