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Kakadu is a name recognised well beyond Australia. President George
Bush has said he wants to go there. It is also well known to cinema audiences
world wide – made famous by actor Paul Hogan, in the guise of Crocodile
Dundee.

In fact, crocodiles, both freshwater and saltwater, are just two of
500 species of terrestrial and aquatic animal that roam freely in the national
park. Some 250,000 tourists make the journey to Australia’s northern edge
to see the park’s wildlife every year, and its popularity among Australians
is growing. Kakadu has also been home to Aborigines for some 40,000 years.

But Kakadu may soon be changed. A decision is about to be made on whether
mining for gold and other minerals will be allowed within the park’s boundaries.
At least for the moment the area involved is small, called Coronation Hill
in the south of the park. But for the antagonists in the debate the issue
is highly symbolic, pitting development against conservation. Miners argue
the workings and its infrastructure will have no effect on the aesthetics
of a park the size of Kakadu. Conservationists see the mine as the thin
edge of a wedge which could have disastrous environmental consequences.
For the Aborigines it is a sacred site.

The government has sidestepped making a decision in the past. But it
will have to act soon. This week, the Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, received
a report from the Resource Assessment Commission (RAC) which lays out and,
as the name implies, assesses the arguments.

It will be difficult to ignore the report – a document the government
itself commissioned, in part as a ploy to delay making a choice. The issue
will be thrashed out within the Hawke Cabinet over the coming days.

Australian mining interests have written to Hawke, saying they will
transfer investment overseas if the decision goes against the industry.
John Quinn, head of Newcrest Mining, the company that wants to move into
Kakadu, says overseas investors will also turn away from Australia if the
mine does not go ahead. His company has already invested about A $14 million
( £6.3 million) in the project.

But the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) accuses the industry
of holding a gun to the government’s head. ‘They are making a self-fulfilling
prophecy,’ says Michael Krockenberger, the AFC’s bio-diversity coordinator.
‘There are plenty of other areas they could mine that are not so important
environmentally, that have the chance of a better economic return and that
would not violate Aboriginal sacred sites.’ The conservationists see mining
as a direct assault on the concept of national parks.

The Jawoyn people-numbering about 300-are widely regarded as traditional
owners of the disputed land, although this has yet to be established by
the Australian Land Commission. The miners say the Aborigines they have
been dealing with want mining because of the employment and economic benefits
it would bring. But the RAC say most Aborigines oppose the scheme.

The mining companies dismiss this finding, arguing that Aborigines’
views can and do change. So it would be a mistake, they say, for the government
to stop the project on the grounds that it would violate religious beliefs
when those beliefs might change.

This view will be argued forcefully before Cabinet by Bob Collins, a
senator from the Northern Territory. A supporter of the mining scheme, he
is married to a full blood Aborigine and has a long record of working with
Aboriginal groups. Collins is ‘infuriated’. He says that the RAC has misinterpreted
the Aborigines’ position.

According to Aboriginal belief, the disputed site is home to a dreamtime
figure called Bula. The gold at Coronation Hill was formerly the blood of
Bula and is the spirit’s ‘essence’. Bula is regarded as a creator of life
and to disturb it is to risk a cataclysmic event. The area has high levels
of natural radioactivity-caused by uranium deposits close to the surface.
It is known to the Aboriginals as ‘sickness country’. ‘They are very strongly
motivated by this fear,’ says an earlier report from the RAC. It went on
to say that the Aboriginals were not attracted by financial compensation.
Opposition to mining, says the RAC, is led by three elders who have been
appointed as custodians. But critics argue that two of the custodians have
held pro-mining views in the past.

Krockenberger, who has lived in the Northern Territory, says the miners
will never come to terms with the Jawoyn community. ‘It’s a question of
their culture being at stake,’ he said. ‘One can’t compromise with culture.’

But Quinn disagrees. ‘There are apparently ways Aboriginals can de-signify
sites,’ he says. An agreement can be reached with the Jawoyn. Indeed, Quinn
says Newcrest would be happy with a government decision that the mine could
go ahead subject to approval by the Jawoyn.

At the centre of the dispute is a 47.5-square kilometre patch ironically
known as the conservation zone, which includes Coronation Hill, and in which
mineral prospecting has been allowed. The zone is surrounded by the 20,000
square kilometre park, although it is not technically part of the park.

Newcrest, and its two partners-Plutonic Resources and Norgold-want to
mine for gold, platinum and palladium. The hill was mined for uranium before
the park was established but the operation was much smaller than the one
planned-a total of 150,000 tonnes of ore was extracted, compared with the
400,000 tonnes a year now envisaged.

Kakadu includes a wet coastal area and a drier interior. It is this
meeting of wet and dry habitats that has resulted in a rich array of flora
and fauna not found elsewhere in the north of Australia, say biologists.

The park was established in three stages. The first-of 6150 square kilometres-was
set up in 1979, exempting the Ranger uranium mine which is still in operation.
The mining industry boasts that Ranger has not led to any environmental
degradation, although Krockenberger, who sits on a committee overseeing
the mine, maintains that seepage of waste into water systems has started.
Uranium levels in Magela Creek, which flows into the park from Ranger, were
about 20 times higher than normal between 25 January and 18 March this year,
according to research by the Office of the Supervising ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ, which
supervises the mine for government. The office said it was too early to
know if this was a chronic problem or an isolated event.

Stage two, of 6930 square kilometres, was declared in 1984. It omitted
the Jabiluka uranium deposit which is in the heart of a flood plain rich
in wildlife. The deposit is not, however, being mined because of the government’s
‘three mine’ policy which prevents more than three uranium mines from operating
in the country. This policy will be challenged at the Labour Party’s conference
in June and pressure is mounting for mining to start at Jabiluka.

Stage three, an area of 4500 square kilometres, was announced in June
l987, with an area of 2250 square kilometres being set aside as the conservation
zone in which ‘controlled’ exploration was allowed for five years. But in
October 1989, this concession to the mining industry was rescinded by Hawke.
He pared the conservation zone to its present size, encompassing Coronation
Hill and another former mine, El Sherana, and announced that the RAC would
conduct its inquiry which began 12 months ago.

The mining partners say there is at least 1.2 million ounces of gold
in Coronation Hill that would take from 9 to 20 years to mine, with much
smaller amounts of platinum and palladium. According to the Australian Bureau
of Mineral Resources there is about 116 tonnes of gold, 21 tonnes of palladium,
6 tonnes of platinum and 8000 tonnes of uranium in the rest of the conservation
zone. One mining outfit, BHP Gold, has boasted that the value of the reserves
in Kakadu is about A $7 billion, but ACF says this figure is grossly inflated
to impress politicians.

The RAC, even as late as last week, was still uncertain as to whether
it would make recommendations to the government, or simply list the available
options. Members of the opposition Liberal Party, if they come to power,
are far less likely to agonise over what to do. Not only would they allow
mining at Coronation Hill but they would expand the conservation zone to
its 1987 boundaries so exploration would be possible in a much greater slice
of Kakadu.

Since Hawke instigated the RAC inquiry the political pendulum has undoubtedly
swung in favour of mining. The green movement, which helped sway the electorate
in favour of Hawke’s Labour Party at the last election, has lost ground
as Australia’s recession has deepened. Mining, a long-established export
earner, could help right the ship, according to its supporters. The conservationists
say that the government should not be swayed by short-term expediency. It
also promises a fight if mining is allowed.

Their case is supported by a survey carried out as part of the RAC study.
In the survey-a random sample of 2034 people were asked how much they would
pay to stop mining in Kakadu. They volunteered figures between $52 and
$128 each per year. This sort of money given by all Australians would dwarf
the earnings from the mine. Not surprisingly, the mining industry has called
the survey results ‘nonsensical’ and unscientific.

The RAC-a three-member panel consisting of a legal expert, an economist
and an ecologist-has already given ammunition to both sides of the debate.
Both drew comfort from an interim report released last February.

The interim report valued the deposits at A $82 million, a comparatively
low figure seized on by the anti-mining lobby. But the Australian Mining
Industry Council says the figure does not include the boost that the mine
would give to other sectors of the economy.

Quinn says the conservationist lobby was discredited by the first report
which said there would be little threat to the environment and to archaeological
sites from the proposed mine. But Krockenberger says Quinn is crowing about
one sentence and ignoring other statements.

The report also said there was a danger that ground water used for the
mine could curtail the flow of the South Alligator River during the dry
season. The river is only 100 metres from the mine and in the dry season
the rare pig-nosed turtle makes its home in a billabong just a few kilometres
upstream. There is also concern about containing sediment from the mine
site and preventing it from silting up the river.

Krockenberger also says the report dispels the myth that Kakadu is ‘clapped
out buffalo country’, a much-reported phrase used by a former resources
and energy minister who at the time argued for a much larger conservation
zone. Justice Donald Stewart, who heads the RAC inquiry, has described Kakadu
as ‘extremely beautiful’ and ‘very typically Australian’.

Researchers from the national research organisation CSIRO say attempts
have been made to label Kakadu as an ecological disaster fit only to be
mined. Mark Lonsdale from the Tropical Ecosystems Research Centre in Darwin
says the park has not been overrun by the prickly shrub mimosa as some have
claimed. And only one per cent of the park has been ‘substantially eroded’
by the Asian water buffalo, according to research by Dean Graetz.

Dick Braithwaite, from CSIRO in Darwin, says the conservation zone has
an unusually high diversity of wildlife by Australian standards. His group
has found 44 native mammal species in the zone, a higher total than for
18 of 20 other sites surveyed in northwestern Australia. Alan Andersen,
also from CSIRO, who has conducted the first ‘comprehensive’ flora survey
in the third stage of Kakadu, claims the area is a ‘botanical gold mine’
with at least 32 notable plant species, including new species and genera.

Andersen says that the area will be difficult to manage if developed
because so little is known about the ecosystem, in particular the insects.

John Stocker, the head of CSIRO, entered the fray last week by declaring
that the RAC report clarified the issues but added little that was new.
The government, he said, risked making a ‘symbolic’ decision rather than
‘choosing for explicit reasons, to mine or not to mine Coronation Hill’.

But the report handed to Hawke this week might contain some surprises.
Roger Kitching, the ecologist on the commission, told ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ: ‘There
are substantial changes (from the first report), not of the issues, but
how we have chosen to see the issues in response to matters that have arisen
²õ¾±²Ô³¦±ð.’

A pro-mining decision is certain to provoke a public outcry-the ferocity
of which will test the conservation movement’s strength at a time of growing
economic hardship and unemployment. Judgment in the miners’ favour could
also, Krockenberger forecasts, tie the issue up in the courts for years.