'Bauxite mining and Chinese dam push Guinea’s chimpanzees to the brink', 21 May 2019

• Guinea is home to about half of the world’s critically endangered western chimpanzees.
• A bauxite mining boom is driving the chimpanzees from their habitats in Guinea’s Boké region. To compensate, two mining firms agreed in 2017 to fund the establishment of Moyen-Bafing National Park, home to an estimated 5,300 chimpanzees.
• The national park is itself threatened by a bauxite mine and a proposed hydroelectric dam — projects that could kill as many as 2,800 of the great apes.

...Over the last three years, mining companies have raced to expand their operations in Guinea to cash in on a boom in bauxite, the raw material required to make aluminum. These activities alone are likely to kill hundreds of chimpanzees...

In Boké prefecture, the heart of Guinea’s bauxite boom, local officials say ecosystems once home to several rare species have been devastated, while communities have seen little benefit. “Today there are seven to eight companies here exploiting bauxite,” says Mamadou Diallo, vice mayor of Boké town. “They are destroying the environment, whether that’s the forest, the earth, the waterways or wild animals.”...

Guinea’s mining code requires that companies set aside 0.5 percent of revenue for local development. Diallo says these funds, which are supposed to be distributed by the central government, have not reached Boké, though a representative from the Mines Ministry disputed this.

Additionally, the law requires communities to grant consent before forests and land can be cleared for bauxite mining. But Diallo says the process was poorly explained to villagers, who feared the state’s reaction if they refused. “They profit from the poverty and precarious living situation of the people,” he says. “Someone who comes along with a contract for 200 million or 400 million Guinean francs [$21,900 to $43,800] for damages, to someone who has never had more than 50,000 francs [$5.50] in their life, they think that’s real money,” he says...

Deforestation and noise from dynamiting are inevitable processes in bauxite mining, however, and have driven chimpanzees from the small pockets of land where they were still living in Boké prefecture...