I suppose that this in part, NIMBYism – Not In My Back Yard – because no, I don’t want to see this here, close to where my children are growing up. But it’s also more than that. It’s about protecting somewhere that is unique, somewhere that is special for the wildlife and bird life it is home to, for the clean waters and unpolluted air it has.

It’s about trying to keep these places that humans haven’t destroyed yet as pure and unpolluted as we can.

Please help by signing the petition to say no to uranium mining in Kuusamo.

There is a lot of gold in the rocks under Kuusamo. An estimated €400,000,000 worth. Enough to interest a gold mining company. Enough for them to want to build a mine just a short distance from my village, not far from the Oulanka National Park.

In any area this is worrying enough – gold mining, indeed any kind of mining, brings with it pollution, changes to the water table and often devastating effects on local wildlife, water purity and fishing.

In a community like Kuusamo where the water is pure enough to drink straight from many of our lakes and rivers, where rare birds like the golden eagle nest, rare plants like the Ladies Slipper (Cypripedium reginae) grow and the fish from its lakes are prized not just throughout the country but around the world for coming from clean, pure waters, this is potentially devastating.

Building a mine here which would run 24 hours a day, every day until the gold was all gone; diverting huge amounts of water from the river; emitting a sulfurous stench into the air and polluted waters back into the water table which would run through the ground and eventually back into the rivers, would be a travesty.

Gone would be the peace and quiet that draws so much of the wildlife like bear, and moose into its forest.

Gone would be the pure waters that animals and humans alike can drink from the rivers and lakes.

Gone would be the amazing bird life that flocks to this small part of the world each year.

And that’s not the worst of it.

Because as well as gold in those rock, lies uranium. They can not extract one without extracting the other. And if they are going to extract the uranium they need somewhere to do it. Somewhere local, somewhere here.

Uranium is a toxic and radioactive metal and any accidents at the plant could cause tragic, devastating and quite likely irreversible harm to Kuusamo in the form of water, soil and air pollution.

Please help save Kuusamo from this.

Sign the petition to say no to uranium mining in Kuusamo.

You can also show your support by joining the Facebook group.

Thank you.