A frog, a toad and Leonardo DiCaprio: Rinehart’s rainforest mine plan hits unusual problems
Environmentalists and scientists are opposing a proposed mining project in Ecuador's Intag Valley, citing threats to rare biodiversity. Several international companies, including a subsidiary of Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting, are vying for the mining concession.
Why it matters
The conflict illustrates the tension between global demand for minerals like copper and the preservation of critical ecological hotspots.
A matchbox-sized ‘dinosaur’ could be a mine-defeating miracle, say opponents of developments in South American cloud forest.
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Share “I have never seen this one,” says Carlos Zorrilla, leaning closer to a white sheet speckled with colourful moths basking in a floodlight’s glow.
The environmentalist has set moth traps on his property on the edge of the cloud forest in Ecuador’s Intag Valley for about two decades, but some nights his backyard still surprises him.
The remote, mountainous Andean valley is renowned for ecological diversity. In fertile northern Ecuador, unique altitude and climate patterns transform the misty forests lapping at Zorrilla’s door into a refuge for hundreds or rare or endangered species, including brown-headed spider monkeys, spectacled bears and more than two dozen types of amphibians.
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