Problems from Mining

Benefits of Abandoned Mines

Organizations

International

• planetGOLD "works to make small-scale gold mining safer, cleaner, and more profitable. Our vision is a clean global supply of gold from small-scale miners."

• The Zero Mercury Working Group (ZMWG) "is an international coalition of more than 110 public interest environmental and health non-governmental organizations from over 55 countries from around the world formed in 2005 by the European Environmental Bureau and the Mercury Policy Project. ZMWG strives for zero supply, demand, and emissions of mercury from all anthropogenic sources, with the goal of reducing mercury in the global environment to a minimum. Our mission is to advocate and support the adoption and implementation of a legally binding instrument which contains mandatory obligations to eliminate where feasible, and otherwise minimize, the global supply and trade of mercury, the global demand for mercury, anthropogenic releases of mercury to the environment, and human and wildlife exposure to mercury."

North America

USA

• Bat Conservancy International: Abandoned Mines Project "partners with agencies including the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, and state AML programs to identify significant bat habitat and ensure long-term protection. On average, our Subterranean Team members spend two weeks of each month in the field conducting biological surveys and mapping underground abandoned mines to assess bat habitat and recommend long-term protection of important bat roosts.
  
  Our abandoned mines initiative is a long-term plan with enormous benefits for bat populations. We survey mines internally and identify features that represent significant habitat and/or contain evidence of bat use. We then make specific management recommendations for each mine and protect important bat roosts while keeping people safe from harm. Since the launch of our abandoned mines initiative in 2008, we have surveyed more than 8,000 mines. Over the next five years we are committed to surveying and protecting an additional 2,500 subterranean features that provide bat habitat."

• The Bureau of Land Management's Abandoned Mine Lands Program "is responsible for closure of physical safety hazards at abandoned mines on BLM-administered lands. While these hazards are controlled to ensure public safety, abandoned mines also provide critically important habitat for a large percentage of cave-dwelling bat species in the United States. Conservation of bats is extremely important due to their significant role as pollinators and as primary predators of night-flying insects, including many harmful crop pests.
  
  To help simultaneously manage public safety and protect bat populations, for the last five years BLM's AML program has partnered with Bat Conservation International, an organization “dedicated to the enduring protection of the world's 1300+ species of bats and their habitats and creating a world in which bats and humans successfully coexist." Through an assistance agreement, BCI supports the AML program by completing biological surveys of abandoned mine shafts and adits prior to closure and by helping to manage AML's bat-centered research efforts."