Noting the site’s “enduring connection” to Indigenous Australians, Australia moved on Saturday to restrict mining at one of the greatest high-grade uranium reserves in the world.
The heritage-listed Kakadu national park, a tropical stretch of gorges and waterfalls that starred in the first “Crocodile Dundee” movie, encircles the Jabiluka deposit in northern Australia.
In honor of the Mirrar people’s long-standing requests, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced that the Jabiluka site, which has never been mined, will be included to the national park.
“They were seeking a guarantee that there would never be uranium mining on their land,” Albanese told a crowd of Labor Party supporters in Sydney.
“This means there will never be mining at Jabiluka,” he added.
Archaeologists discovered a buried trove of stone axes and tools near the Jabiluka site in 2017, which they dated at tens of thousands of years old.
The find was “proof of the extraordinary and enduring connection Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander have had with our land”, Albanese said.
“The Mirrar people have loved and cared for their land for more than 60,000 years.
“That beautiful part of Australia is home to some of the oldest rock art in the world,” he added.
The Jabiluka deposit was found in the early 1970s, but efforts to extract it have been hampered for decades by legal disputes between mining firms and Indigenous caretakers.
The World Nuclear Association claims that it is among the greatest untapped high-grade uranium reserves in the world.
Energy Resources of Australia, a business under the authority of Rio Tinto, formerly possessed mining leases at Jabiluka.
The 2020 explosion of the 46,000-year-old Juukan Gorge rock shelters by mining giant Rio Tinto brought Australia’s Indigenous site conservation under close criticism.In order to overcome a 26-year nuclear ban, Australia’s conservative opposition has pledged to construct nuclear power facilities all across the nation if it wins the next election.
