Part two of four | Ethica Diamonds, Newquay, Cornwall
In the first blog in this series, we looked at what diamond mining does to the land. The scale of excavation, the mountains of waste, the permanent scarring of landscapes that took thousands of years to form.
But mining does not affect only the ground it operates on. Its impact on wildlife extends far beyond the mine's physical boundaries - through waterways, across migration routes, and into ecosystems that have never seen a drilling rig but are nonetheless paying the price.
It Is Not Just the Mine Itself
The infrastructure that surrounds a diamond mine is as damaging as the mine itself. The accommodation blocks for workers the size of small towns. The access roads cutting through previously undisturbed wilderness. The damming of rivers to provide water or store waste. The waste rock that must be dumped somewhere and takes up space that was, until recently, habitat.
Each of these components has its own ecological footprint, and together they create a zone of damage that can extend tens of kilometres beyond the mine's official boundary.
What Contaminated Water Does to Wildlife
As we covered in the water blog in this series, the waterways around diamond mines frequently become contaminated with chemicals, heavy metals, and sediment. For wildlife, the consequences are immediate and severe.
Even a modest increase in sediment levels - something that might not even be visible to a casual observer - can sufficiently alter the conditions in a river or stream to destroy the microscopic aquatic life at the base of the food chain. When that goes, everything that depends on it follows.
Salmon are a particularly well documented example. They return to the exact spawning grounds where they were born, navigating by instinct and memory across vast distances. Where mining has silted up those grounds, the eggs suffocate and do not hatch. Where dams have been built to store mining waste, the spawning grounds themselves no longer exist. Salmon attempting to find alternative sites use enormous amounts of energy that they do not always survive spending.
And where salmon disappear, so do the predators that depend on them. Bears. Eagles. Otters. The collapse of a single species reverberates through the entire ecosystem.
Habitat Loss
Loss of habitat is the most straightforward impact to understand, and perhaps the most severe. Diamonds occur where they occur. If that happens to be in the Amazonian rainforest, in the remote permafrost zones of northern Canada, or in the ancient river systems of central Africa - then that is where the mining happens, regardless of what lives there.
Deforestation in Angola as a result of diamond mining and associated activity contributes to an ongoing loss of forest habitat for the animals that depend on it. The numbers are not dramatic in percentage terms - fractions of a percent per year - but they accumulate, and the species losing habitat do not have somewhere else to go.
In Canada, nature reserves have been established to protect some of the species most affected by mining activity, and individual mines have implemented measures to reduce their direct impact on wildlife. At the Diavik mine, for example, caribou have right of way on access roads, and waste piles are contoured to allow caribou to pass over them.
This sounds considerate. The reality is more complicated.
The Road Problem
Studies have shown that caribou can sense a road from approximately 50 kilometres away and will avoid it entirely, choosing to travel much longer distances around it rather than crossing it. Roads that are built for mining access - and the infrastructure around them - do not just inconvenience caribou. They effectively reroute their entire migration, adding significant distances to journeys that pregnant cows are already making under significant physical strain.
The additional energy demand of a longer migration route affects the survival rates of calves. It affects the condition of cows arriving at calving grounds. Over time, it affects the size and health of entire herds.
Wolves and other predators have also learned to use roads to travel faster, which means that caribou avoiding roads are simultaneously moving into areas where predator pressure is higher. The road creates a cascade of consequences that extend well beyond the road itself.
The Habitat That Cannot Be Restored
When mines close, environmental restoration plans typically involve replanting vegetation and encouraging the return of wildlife. At the Victor Mine in Ontario, Canada, post-mining replanting plans described the expected result as excellent for moose.
Moose are not the problem. Caribou are. And caribou require old growth forests and bog landscapes with specific lichens that take centuries to develop. The reinstated habitat - younger, different in composition, permanently altered in drainage - will not support caribou in the way the original did. The species that was displaced by the mine will not return simply because the mine has closed.
Mining companies plan for restoration. But you cannot restore an ancient forest, a pristine peat bog, or a salmon spawning ground on any human timeline. Some things, once lost, are simply lost.
The Unexpected Consequences
Not all wildlife consequences of mining are predictable. In disused mines across Sierra Leone and South Africa, the pits left behind have filled with stagnant water - creating ideal breeding conditions for mosquitoes carrying malaria. Communities, livestock, and wildlife in those areas face a significantly elevated risk of disease as a direct result of mining operations that closed years or decades ago.
The diamonds were taken. The mine closed. The malaria remained.
What We Do Differently
At Ethica Diamonds in Newquay, every stone we sell is lab grown. No habitat is destroyed in its creation. No rivers are dammed. No migration routes are severed. No waste piles accumulate in ancient wilderness.
We grow diamonds from carbon, using renewable energy, in controlled environments. The ecological footprint is not zero - nothing is - but it is incomparably smaller than what we have described in this blog.
We think that matters. Particularly when you are choosing something to wear every day for the rest of your life.
Read the Rest of This Series
Blog 1: The True Cost of Mined Diamonds - What Happens to the Land →
Blog 3: The True Cost of Mined Diamonds - What Happens to the Water →
Blog 4: The True Cost of Mined Diamonds - The Human Cost →
Choose a lab grown diamond from Ethica →
Browse our full collection at ethicadiamonds.co.uk or book a free consultation with our team in Newquay, in person or virtually.
Sources:
https://ejatlas.org/conflict/marange-diamond-mines-pollute-rivers-zimbabwe
