Tanzania plan to mine Uranium at the UN World Heritage Site Selous Game Reserve.
If you are going to allow people to mine and destroy a heritage site, then please explain the point of defining a ‘Heritage Site’!!!
Uranium will make them money for the short term but as always when you run out of Uranium, what next ? Similar to your Chinese/Eastern Asian friends, once they have eliminated Tigers due to ‘Chinese Medicine’ who are you going to eliminate next ?
The government is promised $5m a year so they will be happy, as our good old friends ‘Dire Straits’ once sang, Money for Nothing!
“But Mr Maige, who also serves as Tanzania’s tourism minister, insisted there would be no impact on that forest either. He said it currently costs the government about $490,000 a year to manage it and the income from mining would help pay for guards to stop poaching”
I can see the attraction, the revenue can pay for the guards to protect the reserve from poaching BUT there are too many things that can go wrong. They plan to process the uranium abroad, BUT what makes them think there will be no leakage and water contamination into the lakes and rivers ? This is what animals will use as their waterholes. Once contaminated, this enters the animals gut and leads to death. Animals wont taste the water and with a slight difference think ‘nah, I’ll get another glass’! They have no choice.
The minerals in the ground may be emitting a degree of radiation, but once you open up the mine and there’s a bigger vent, what then ?
Don’t be shorted signed and foolish, a short term gain is not worth the risk. Think of the future and the risks involved. If you make any mistakes, tourism will stop. Then what ? You have radiation leakage and images of hundreds of animals dead, you think people will want to visit that reserve or even Tanzania.
I know its easy to say, but its not always about money.
Animals Do Have A Voice Blog 