SMS: Seven Wonders of the World vs gold mine

Thu, 07/30/2009 12:55 PM  |  Reader's Forum

The last of the dragons: A group of Komodo dragons bask in sunlight, which they usually do before going hunting and to warm themselves up. These ancient cold-blooded reptiles sunbathe to increase their body temperatures to between 28 and 38 degrees Celsius. JP/Ricky Yudhistira

Your comments on the plans of several companies to explore gold mining near Komodo National Part amid Indonesia's effort to list the park in the New Seven Wonders of the World.

Don't let the mining company ruin the natural habitat of the Komodos.

Subari
Jakarta

This country has to learn about the impacts of such mining activities on the welfare of the local residents and ecology.

I think the government should closely consider to any policy that may damage the environment near habitats of such unique animals like Komodo. I wonder how the government could protect the environment of the place which is being promoted as one of the Seven Wonders of the World if such explorations go ahead?

Yogi Suwasono
Jakarta

What do I think about destroying yet another place on our small planet? Of course I am completely against it. I also can't believe that we are even considering destroying a national park with the biggest lizard in the world in it.

I was in Sumbawa before a giant gold mining company was there and I have been there afterwards. Moluk, which was a peaceful little village with pristine beaches and fantastic surf, is now a little town for about 10,000 miners with brothels and bars.

The mine dumps everything into the ocean - all the goodies like mercury and other nice things which come with gold mining. The amount of gold per ton of dirt is so low (that is what the company says) that the same amount could not be mined in the West because environmental standards would make it too expensive to mine there.

But in Indonesia it is still profitable because you don't have any regulations so production costs are 25 percent of what they are in the West, and as I witnessed the tailings are just dumped into the ocean.

The company is currently sucking mountains 600 meters above sea level to 400 meters below sea level with a big vacuum into a little factory were all the goodies get separated and the good goodies gets sent to Japan to be further processed into cooper, silver, gold etc. The rest just keeps going into the ocean.

In Sumbawa, there are 16 mountains that are going to be sucked into the ocean with all the heavy metals witch are naturally in our earth but should be kept there or cleaned and buried back into the earth, and with it all the chemicals with are extremely toxic.

I hope you got what I think about doing this nightmare somewhere else.

Herly
Denpasar

The Wonders of the World is not Komodo, but the abundance of unexplored gold may be.

Odo Fadloeli
Bandung

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