Pittsburgh-based Alcoa will pay the Australian government a settlement the company put at $36 million for “unlawfully” clearing tracts of endangered forest without approvals between 2019 and 2025.
The metals giant began mining bauxite — the raw ingredient for aluminum — from beneath Australia’s Northern Jarrah forest in the 1960s, but its footprint has swelled in recent years, drawing new scrutiny from regulators and the public.
And so now they’ll be made to restore and replant the area cleared as well as the fine right ?
Article doesn’t make it clear other than being an Oops my bad have some money type reconciliation.
[Edit]
The company runs a rehabilitation program to restore former mined sites, but a prominent botanist who once tried to aid those efforts now maintains it’s ineffective, and a growing chorus of Australian scientists join those criticisms.
Advertisements the company sponsored last summer promoting its rehabilitation program drew the attention of an ad standards watchdog, which issued a report stating “the advertisement was inaccurate and likely to mislead or deceive target consumers.”
