Christmas Island Phosphate Mining

Buttress roots in plateau rainforest

Phosphate mining and it's associated infrastructure have been the main reason for rainforest clearing on the island - almost 3000 hectares of forest have been cleared since mining began in the 1890s, and most of that was cleared in the post-war period up to the mid 1980s. Bob Hawke put a Prime Ministerial moratorium on further rainforest clearing in 1988.

Around this time, negotiations began for a new mining company, Phosphate Resources Limited, to resume phosphate mining on Christmas Island. This company began operations in October 1990 under a lease agreement with the Federal Government.

	Mining Field

One of the conditions of this lease is that there will be no further clearing of rainforest on Christmas Island for phosphate mining. PRL is recovering phosphate ore from old stockpiles, and reworking old production areas left unrehabilitated by previous mining operations. Their lease areas currently total 2054 ha. This operation removes all regrowth vegetation and most of the soil, leaving a moonscape of limestone pinnacle and boulders. Large areas are destroyed to extract the ore, since the ore body is not very deep, just a few metres in places. There is no backfilling and little overburden.

In early 2002 PRL submitted a proposal to the federal government for new leases over a further 450 ha of Christmas Island.

Bullozing rainforest circa 1980 - this could happen again

These lease areas include 320 ha of undisturbed, primary forest, distributed among nine blocks. All proposed lease areas fall outside the Christmas Island National Park, but several share a common boundary with it.

This proposal, and another one seeking approval for exploration of phosphate reserves under intact forest, are currently being assessed under the provisions of the EPBC Act. The mining proposal is being assessed at the level of an Environmental Impact Statement, and the exploration proposal is being assessed as a Public Environment Report.

	Old mining area reworked by PRL. Nothing left except rocks and scraping of dirt
	Old clearing from several decades ago. Limestone pinnacles, with weeds and ferns growing between them

During the autumn sitting of parliament, Senator Bob Brown asked a Question on Notice of the Environment Minister, David Kemp. The gist of the question was that if government policy on Christmas Island is to ban further clearing of rainforest, and if PRL's lease stipulates that the company is not allowed to clear any more rainforest, would the Minister now reject the application for new mining leases over areas covered by primary rainforest, and abort the EIS process for those areas? Mr Kemp is yet to reply.

Bulldosed Forest

PRL is seeking to overturn government policy to gain access to a further 320 ha of precious, undisturbed rainforest, and has the public support of The Minister for Transport and Regional Services, Mr Wilson Tuckey.

In addition, PRL continues to push for access to old phosphate stockpiles located inside the National Park - in effect, they are seeking to expand their commercial mining operations into the Christmas Island National Park.

PRL's proposals are a backward step for the conservation of biodiversity on Christmas Island. The clearing of rainforest on Christmas Island has been banned for the last 15 years, and it was made quite clear to PRL from the outset that further clearing was banned because it was inconsistent with the government's long-term strategy for the island, which was the development of eco-tourism.

The rainforest that PRL wants to destroy provides habitat for many endemic plants and animals, including several listed under the EPBC Act. More than one million red land crabs could be killed as a direct result of mining operations by PRL in these areas. This species is already experiencing a catastrophic decline in numbers due to the impact of invasive yellow crazy ants.