Land Biodiversity and Cultural Heritage Management
Effective land management and site rehabilitation are critical priorities throughout the mining life cycle. At MMG, our operations implement controls for land biodiversity and cultural management to minimise the impact associated with necessary land disturbances during exploration and mining activities.
Controls are in place so that land access for exploration and operations follows a process ensuring that we don’t explore or mine within the boundaries of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) ‘World Heritage List’ properties, only exploring or mining adjacent to World Heritage Listed properties where the proposed activity is compatible with the outstanding universal values.
We respect legally designated protected areas, ensuring any operational changes are compatible with the land as designated by the relevant authorities. We ensure any potential biodiversity impacts are addressed through the project life cycle, applying the mitigation hierarchy to do so.
Our approach involves conducting baseline studies and surveys, often in collaboration with local stakeholders, to identify land values. When impacts to biodiversity values are unavoidable, we take measures such as relocating species or implementing biodiversity offset projects according to management plans developed with expert input.
To minimise our impact on the environment and nearby communities, we implement management plans for open areas of disturbed land. This includes addressing drainage, erosion, and dust control.
While we don’t set annual rehabilitation targets, our operations undertake progressive annual rehabilitation. Disturbed areas are primarily limited to operational zones currently in use or those planned for future use. Our rehabilitation programs are designed to achieve specific objectives related to proposed final land use, and we continually monitor rehabilitation success over time.
Information on our current land management rehabilitation and biodiversity programs can be found in our Sustainability Reports and on wemineforprogress.com.
Cultural heritage management
Where cultural heritage finds are identified, we engage with community representatives, indigenous groups and other local stakeholders to determine appropriate management actions. Our Social Performance Standard and Safety, Security, Health and Environment (SSHE) Performance Standard clearly set out the controls and procedures to follow to protect and respect both tangible and intangible cultural heritage. We develop, implement and maintain site-specific cultural heritage management procedures that include identifying and registering cultural heritage finds and plans for collaborative management.