Tougher times for Christmas Island?

A decision from an Australian court would protect the Indian Ocean island's wildlife, but could ruin its economy.

By Nick Squires | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the August 1, 2007 edition

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Territory of Christmas Island, Australia - For more than a century, it has been the sole raison d'être of this tiny, jungle-clad island. Of all the gifts nature bestowed on Christmas Island, phosphate has been by far the most lucrative.

Since the 1890s, the powdery soil – the legacy of millions of years of bird droppings – has been dug from beneath the island's monsoon forests and shipped around the world as fertilizer.

But now, the Australian government, which administers remote Christmas Island as an external territory, has said enough is enough.

Canberra, Australia's capital, decreed in April that there will be no expansion of phosphate mining on the island, which lies in the Indian Ocean, closer to Indonesia than to Australia. Remaining leases on mining grounds would be allowed to continue, but once they are exhausted in two to three years, the 100-year-old industry will be forced to close down.

The ruling has dismayed many of the 1,200 islanders, who fear a mass exodus as 140 mine employees, their families, and dozens of dependent businesses are forced to leave in search of jobs.

Besides the economic toll, closing the mines on Christmas Island could also shatter one of Australia's most unique cultural communities. Christmas Islanders fear that their unique mélange of European and Asian cultures now faces extinction.

"You have to weigh the environmental impact with the social impact," says Alfred Chong, a manager of one of the mines, rattling down a rough dirt road in a four-wheel-drive vehicle as fat drops of tropical rain hammer on the roof. "A lot of the older workers don't even speak English – they won't get new jobs in Australia."

Phosphate Resources Ltd., the island's largest employer, challenged the government in federal court on July 13 for the rights to continue mining.

In his decision, environment minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said new mining would destroy 670 acres of rain forest and impose "an unacceptable impact" on rare species, including seabirds such as the Abbott's booby and the Christmas Island frigate bird, as well as an endemic species of bat.

"The environmental values that have been identified in the past need to be protected in the future," said Labor's environment spokesman, Peter Garrett, a former rock star with the band Midnight Oil and a passionate conservationist. "We do not oppose the decision."

Many islanders now predict a grim future for this outpost of Australia on the edge of Asia.

"Without the mine, this island is nothing," says Don Newton, while serving up eggs and bacon in the Rockfall Café, which overlooks the shimmering blue haze of the Indian Ocean.

"If they're going to take away the mining, they need to replace it with something else, otherwise there'll be a huge vacuum."

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