> Eventually, the ecology will go back to normal. No, it won't. Remediation of these areas usually involve planting back a fraction of the biodiversity that wa

> Eventually, the ecology will go back to normal. No, it won't. Remediation of these areas usually involve planting back a fraction of the biodiversity that was there before, and usually cloned from the same genetic stock, making the new plants more of a monoculture and susceptible to disease and less adaptable to environmental changes. That's the plants. In the meantime, all the animals were pushed out of that large area (I've never seen a small mine), and then either killed their neighbors in the (assumed) adjacent ecosystem, or were killed by them. Great. Next you'll be telling us the remediated areas are actually better than what it was before (and in my anecdotal experience some mining companies not only say exactly this, but commission studies to prove it).