The Fourth Installment of a Greenie on a Gold Mine is Here!

This is a continuation of the posts that I have been writing about my experience as an Environmental Scientist in the mining industry. You can read the first entries in this series here, here and here.

I've spoken a little bit about what an Environmental Scientist does on a mine but haven't really gone into much detail. So, in the next couple of entries, I'll talk a little about what my role involved and the interesting things that we encountered on the mines.

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Handling Everything From Furry to Slippery

Site environment staff are commonly perceived to be the people that just go about catching the random animals that appear in populated areas of mine-sites. And it is a part of our job, however the reality is that it's only a small part of our job.

It is a constantly entertaining, challenging, and sometimes depressing or disturbing part of our job though.

In my time on the mines I've encountered dams that were full of dead kangaroos after dingoes herded them in and drowned them, shot kangaroos that were stuck in tailings dams, and even dragged cattle out of old drill holes that had collapsed into what appeared to be bottomless pits.

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Swan Taxis

_{Swans - kinda heavy and very bitey}

One of the most entertaining wildlife jobs that I had to deal with was what we called "Swan Taxis". And the picture above is from this time. The mine site that I was working at was situated next to a very large wetland. This wetland served as a breeding ground for both Pelicans and Swans, along with 1000s of other birds. The problem was that, shortly after the Swans completed their breeding season, they'd migrate south.

And the juveniles that hadn't grown to a large enough size or maturity for migration would try to follow. Our mine just happened to be situated along the path that these birds would travel. And so for a few weeks of every year, our mine would be filled with juvenile Swans, and it was our job to remove these birds from the mine and take them back to the wetland.

_{We weren't catching things that were this cute}

There were some days where we were transporting up to 12 Swans a day. And this was very time consuming. Swans are hard to catch, they like to bite, and weirdly, they don't like to be taken out of their transport cage...

I caught swans in laboratories, along rail lines, from mine pits, and from ore processing facilities. It was a fun job. But not much real work got done during this time.

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The Slippery Things that Like to Bite

It was a never ending adventure when it came to wildlife on site. But the most challenging part of what we did was catch snakes that liked to wander their way into the villages and work areas. Catching snakes isn't what I would classify as fun. Thankfully, we were well trained to deal with them, but bloody hell was it a scary job when you're dealing with a cornered snake that wants nothing more than to stab you with its pointy and poisonous teeth.

_{A Death Adder - It's like Satan with no limbs}

My most hated snake is the Death Adder, those little fat buggers are all muscle. And they are one of the most venomous and fastest moving snakes in Australia.

The death adder is considered one of the most venomous snakes in the world, surpassed only by few species, among them other famous Australian snakes, like the inland taipan.
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And to make matters worse, they can attack in any direction. Unlike many other snakes that only attack in one direction.

If you're wondering how we catch snakes, that's not something that I want to go into. The worst thing a person can do is try to catch one of these creatures without proper training. There are a lot of idiots out there risking their lives for a little youtube fame however. For the record, this is one of the worst ways you can possibly handle a snake:

And just to balance things out with a more educated approach, here's a video of the Eastern Brown Snake. Where I worked, we had the Western Brown Snake which is very similar. The character in this video showed the snake the appropriate level of respect that it deserves. And even then, the snake still got a little aggressive.

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And Finally, the Furry Things

Handing wildlife on site was often a mixture of joy, fear and sad moments. I came to the realisation quite early on in my career that I would be killing more things than I would be saving. But, when we did save an animal's life, it was an amazing feeling.

When it came to furry animals, we mostly dealt with Kangaroos. The thing about mine sites, is that they create a lot of open water storage facilities. The water is needed to wet down roads (to reduce dust), supply the ore processing plants, for use in the mine villages, and for use as drinking water.

What this means is that there are a lot of water dams across the mine, and this water attracts animals. So, frustratingly, mines are filled with kangaroos, wild dogs and dingoes, and cats. Cats are a topic unto themselves, I'll do a separate post on this topic soon.

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Every day, we have Kangaroos being struck by vehicles and getting stuck in dams and tailings storage facilities. If you're unsure what a tailings storage facility is, I talked about them in this post. Most of the time, the kangaroos were killed quickly, especially if struck by a fast moving vehicle. But sometimes, we'd need to put them down ourselves.

And, as the only people trained in the humane dispatching of wildlife on site, it fell to the Greenies on site to deal with these events. It wasn't fun. When I first started working in the industry, I only had a large and heavy wooden stick to use (and no training either) but as the years went on, I graduated to a rifle for putting down the injured animals.

Talking about putting down Kangaroos is depressing, but there was one positive thing that came from some of these occasions. Sometimes, the Kangaroos that were struck were females, and sometimes they were carrying Joeys. The good thing about mine site personnel knowing to call us quickly when they hit something, is that we were often able to respond quickly enough to save the Joeys.

_{The perfect example of the little guys we looked after}

These little guys came in all shapes and sizes. And we were able to rescue them almost regardless of their age. We were all trained to feed and look after the little furry guys, and as soon as we could get them on a plane, we sent them to a wildlife rehabilitation centre in Perth (the link below the image will take you to their Facebook page). The only downside was, that when they are tiny, they needed feeding every couple of hours. So if you had to keep one overnight, you didn't expect to sleep very much. They are freaking adorable though.

My wife and I spent a couple of years volunteering at the rehabilitation centre that we sent our Joeys to. The centre does amazing work and are responsible for saving countless animals and bringing them back to full health for release back into the environment. The centre looked after everything from Joeys, to lizards along with a wide variety of birds (including an emu). It truly is an amazing place. Centres like this are almost solely run by volunteers which makes them even more impressive. The dedication and passion of the volunteers is second to none.

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Concluding Remarks

While dealing with wildlife was only a small part of my time on site, it was by far the most memorable part of my experience on site. It was both rewarding, sometimes distressing, and always exciting. There are many stories to tell about my experience with wildlife on site. But I realised quite quickly that this post was turning into a novel so it's time to cut it short.

Feel free to ask any questions in the comments

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