Europe Mining

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Despite a ban on mining, an illegal trade in amber is flourishing.

Just outside the western Ukrainian village of Kukhitska Volya, the dense forest turns into a moonscape of mud-filled craters and mutilated trees. The locals call the place a “Klondike,” an illegal mine where hundreds of men and women dig amber—the fossilized resin of trees that died 40 million years ago—out of the swampy soil.

Using gas-powered pumps, the miners inject water 10 to 20 feet into the ground, dislodging dirt and the occasional load of honey-hued gems. As word spreads of the approach of an unfamiliar car, the workers hastily load their equipment onto trucks and speed off. In less than five minutes, everyone is gone.

The site is one of scores of Ukrainian amber fields where wildcat prospectors dig up the stones. The State Geology Committee estimates the country has as much as 15,000 tons of amber buried in its western forests, and with virtually no law enforcement—and what participants say are corrupt local officials—illegal mining has supplanted more expensive legal methods of extracting amber.

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http://www.engineerlive.com/

Jon Lawson reports on the latest from an historically significant location for mining: the UK

Mining has had a long history in Britain, and greatly influenced its economic development. One of the earliest known mines is at Grime’s Graves in Norfolk, Eastern England, where Neolithic people excavated high quality flint over 5,000 years ago. They dug some 400 pits using tools made from deer antler.

In more modern times, the abundance of coal underpinned the industrial revolution, and at one time before WW1, one million men were employed underground and there were 200 pits in Wales alone. However the industry has declined, with many unprofitable pits closing during the Thatcher administration in the 1980s.

The last deep pit, Kellingley colliery in North Yorkshire, closed at the end of 2015. With the closure was the loss of over 400 jobs. The remaining mines produce around 12 million tonnes per year.

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