Blood Coltan Fuels Butchery in the Congo
By B. McPherson Is that blood on your ear? Is blood oozing from the coltan that helps power your phone, your computer and a myriad of other electronic goods that make life in N. America so enjoyable? Coltan is the commercial name for the ores columbite and tantalite which, when refined, is used in electronic capacitors. Australia, Brazil and Canada are some of the leading producers of this new “gold”, but 80% of the world’s supply comes from sub-Saharan Africa. At one point this most useful substance was fetching $1000 per kilo. It has fueled a mineral rush in the eastern Congo (DRC). There were far reaching effects of the discovery of this mineral. Firstly, the miners rushed to exploit possible deposits, with no regard to the environmental consequences. Virunga Park has fallen victim to the freelance digging. Accompanying the ruin by mining is the poaching of large mammals for bush meat, including the critically endangered mountain gorilla. The DRC has the second large...