Book+Reports

Coltan Ore: What is Coltan Ore? Coltan is short for Columbie Tantalite. It is found in the Eastern Regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Humans are mining coltan and are using and are using it to make mobile phones, laptops and other electronic devices. How is in mined? Men work together to dig large craters in streambeds. They take away the dirt from the surface. Underground is the Coltan. The Mountain Gorillas. Gorillas are mammals that have a family of monkeys, lemurs, apes and surprisingly humans! The appearance: Their bodies are covered with black or brown hair. Gorillas look fierce but are actually shy, friendly animals. They are located in Central Africa. It’s habitat is the Dense Forest/ Rainforests. The Lifestyle. Female gorillas mate when they are 8 years old, the males when they are 12. They have a life span of 40-50 years. Their Scientific Name is “Gorilla Beringei Beringei”. The Diet. Gorillas eat leaves, buds, bark and fruit. A large male can eat up too 27 kilos of food a day! These animals eat in the morning and rest in the afternoon. Newspaper Article- Recount. Janae Houghton. “Want to save a gorilla? It’s your call.” Surprisingly, it doesn’t take many mobile phones too save an endangered gorilla. Actually recycling 500 mobile phones can pay the wages of an Anti-poaching ranger for a whole year. Rangers could help save the gorillas from extinction. If we recycle the 9 million mobiles sold in Australia, then it would provide 4.5 million dollars to help the Gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo. That’s heaps of money! But the problem is the survival of the Eastern Lowland Mountain Gorillas. It is the mining of Coltan. A small amount of minerals from the coltan are used in every mobile phone. 1 billion mobile phones are sold each year, which means alot of mining. The mines are right in the gorilla habitat. Victorians have done pretty well by launching a new companion called”, They’re calling on you”, at the Royal Melbourne Zoo. $2,500 has been raised fro the mobile phone recycling. Help save gorillas by dropping any unwanted mobile phones at the Melbourne Zoo, Werribee Open Ranged Zoo or at Healsville Sanctuary. It’s your call! Endangered Gorillas. How are the Mountain Gorillas endangered? These animals are on the endangered list because of deforestation of their habitats. Their forests have been cleared to make way to dig for the Coltan. Sadly, it is found right where the gorillas live. We use a mineral in the Coltan to mobile phones and more. It also means that the have to die because they have nowhere to go while this is happening. Terribly, there are only 720 Mountain Gorillas left in the wild. They are also poached for many purposes. Save them urgently! My Personal Opinion. What do I think about this? I am really sad that these gorillas might become extinct really soon because of something that we find so important in our everyday lives. - Mobile Phones. These animals are loving and friendly, not fierce at all. They are just like us, protective of their families and they communicate with each other as well. It’s as if saying to imagine that someone would just come to your home and ruin it. Nothing would be left, including you… The gorilla’s habitat is being destroyed, just as I have mentioned in the last paragraphs. When it is being destroyed, they cannot protect each other. It’s just horrible to think of what would happen to them, but we can do our bit to help. I already know that I will recycle any unwanted mobile phones that I use in my lifetime. Well, what are you going to do? Their lives depend on you!