Simandou is a range of hills located in the

Nzérékoré Nzérékoré ( N’ko: , Adlam: ; also spelled N'Zérékoré) is the second-largest city in Guinea by population after the capital, Conakry, and the largest city in the Guinée forestière region of southeastern Guinea. The city is the capital of ...

and

Kankan Kankan ( Mandingo: Kánkàn; N’ko: ߞߊ߲ߞߊ߲߫) is the largest city in Guinea in land area, and the third largest in population, with a population of 198,013 people as of 2020. The city is located in eastern Guinea about east of the ...

regions of southeastern

Guinea Guinea, officially the Republic of Guinea, is a coastal country in West Africa. It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Guinea-Bissau to the northwest, Senegal to the north, Mali to the northeast, Côte d'Ivoire to the southeast, and Sier ...

, in the country's mountainous, forested ''

Guinée Forestière Guinée forestière (Forested Guinea) is a forested mountainous region in southeastern Guinea, extending into northeastern Sierra Leone. It is one of four natural regions into which Guinea is divided and covers 23% of the country. It includes a ...

'' region. At the southern end of the range the site of a large

iron ore Iron ores are rocks and minerals from which metallic iron can be economically extracted. The ores are usually rich in iron oxides and vary in color from dark grey, bright yellow, or deep purple to rusty red. The iron is usually found in the f ...

deposit is currently being developed.

Geography

The Simandou Range extends north and south, it is located east of Banankoro and

Kérouané Kérouané is a town located in southeastern Guinea Guinea, officially the Republic of Guinea, is a coastal country in West Africa. It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Guinea-Bissau to the northwest, Senegal to the north, Mali to th ...

, from southern

Kankan Region Kankan Region () is a region of Guinea located in the east of the country. It is the largest region of Guinea by area. The region has five (5) prefectures (Kankan, Kérouané, Kouroussa, Mandiana and Siguiri). It is bordered by the countries o ...

into northern

Nzérékoré Region The Nzérékoré Region () is one of the eight administrative regions of Guinea. Spread across an area of , its capital and largest city is Nzérékoré. Located in the south-west corner of the country, it is bordered by the countries of Sierra ...

. The highest point is Pic de Fon, elevation , in the southern portion of the range. Other peaks include Pic de Tibé, elevation , is located at the center of the range, and Pic de Going, , to the north.

Geology

The Simandou Range consists of a sequence of deformed

itabirite Itabirite, also called banded-quartz hematite or hematite schist, is a foliated, metamorphosed oxide-facies iron formation in which the original chert or jasper bands have been recrystallized into macroscopically distinguishable grains of quar ...

phyllite Phyllite ( ) is a type of foliation (geology), foliated metamorphic rock formed from slate that is further metamorphosed so that very fine grained white mica achieves a preferred orientation.Stephen Marshak ''Essentials of Geology'', 3rd ed. I ...

s, and

quartzite Quartzite is a hard, non- foliated metamorphic rock that was originally pure quartz sandstone.Essentials of Geology, 3rd Edition, Stephen Marshak, p 182 Sandstone is converted into quartzite through heating and pressure usually related to tecton ...

s within

Proterozoic The Proterozoic ( ) is the third of the four geologic eons of Earth's history, spanning the time interval from 2500 to 538.8 Mya, and is the longest eon of Earth's geologic time scale. It is preceded by the Archean and followed by the Phanerozo ...

basement rocks In geology, basement and crystalline basement are crystalline rocks lying above the mantle and beneath all other rocks and sediments. They are sometimes exposed at the surface, but often they are buried under miles of rock and sediment. The baseme ...

.http://www.hemscott.com/servlet/HsPublic?context=ir.access&ir_option=RNS_NEWS&item=64497524081696&ir_client_id=1245&transform=newsitem Rio Tinto - Iron ore resources, Simandou, Republic of Guinea, Rio Tinto News Announcement RNS Number 4634V, 29 May 2008, Accessed 12.12.2010

Ecology and natural history

The Simandou Range is an important area of conservation for the Guinean forest ecosystem of West Africa, one of the world's biologically richest and most endangered terrestrial ecosystems. The

Upper Guinean forests The Upper Guinean forests is a tropical seasonal forest region of West Africa. The Upper Guinean forests extend from Guinea and Sierra Leone in the west through Liberia, Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana to Togo in the east, and a few hundred kilometers in ...

ecosystem, of which the Simandou Range forms part of, extends across southern Guinea,

Sierra Leone Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered to the southeast by Liberia and by Guinea to the north. Sierra Leone's land area is . It has a tropical climate and envi ...

Liberia Liberia, officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the West African coast. It is bordered by Sierra Leone to Liberia–Sierra Leone border, its northwest, Guinea to Guinea–Liberia border, its north, Ivory Coast to Ivory Coast–Lib ...

, southern

Côte d’Ivoire Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d'Ivoire and officially the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, is a country on the southern coast of West Africa. Its capital city of Yamoussoukro is located in the centre of the country, while its largest city and ...

Ghana Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...

, and western

Togo Togo, officially the Togolese Republic, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Ghana to Ghana–Togo border, the west, Benin to Benin–Togo border, the east and Burkina Faso to Burkina Faso–Togo border, the north. It is one of the le ...

. It is believed to have once covered as much as , but over centuries of human activity, nearly 70 percent of the original forest cover has disappeared, leaving isolated patches of different forest types that host ecological communities of exceptional diversity and numerous endemic species. GDA (Global Development Alliance) Promotes Forest Conservation, Community Development, USAID Guinea, 20 April 2004, Accessed 11.12.2010 The variety of habitats found in the Simandou Range include humid Guinean

savanna A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) biome and ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach th ...

Western Guinean lowland forest The Western Guinean lowland forests ecoregion (WWF #AT0130) is a tropical moist broadleaf forest ecoregion of West Africa. It is centered on Liberia, with portions in surrounding countries. It is the westernmost tropical rainforest in Africa, a ...

montane Montane ecosystems are found on the slopes of mountains. The alpine climate in these regions strongly affects the ecosystem because temperatures lapse rate, fall as elevation increases, causing the ecosystem to stratify. This stratification is ...

and

gallery forests A gallery forest is one formed as a corridor along rivers or wetlands, projecting into landscapes that are otherwise only sparsely treed such as savannas, grasslands, or deserts. The gallery forest maintains a more temperate microclimate above th ...

, and the rare and endangered West African

montane grassland Montane grasslands and shrublands are a biome defined by the World Wildlife Fund. The biome includes high elevation grasslands and shrublands around the world. The term "montane" in the name of the biome refers to "high elevation", rather than t ...

habitat. The Pic de Fon forest at the southern end of the range is a relatively intact area of approximately 25,600 ha that contains many typical flora and fauna of the

Guinean montane forests The Guinean montane forests are a tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests, tropical moist broadleaf forest ecoregion of West Africa. The ecoregion occupies the portions of the Guinea Highlands lying above 600 meters elevation, extending ...

ecosystem, including endangered species such as the

Nimba otter shrew The Nimba otter shrew (''Micropotamogale lamottei'') is a dwarf otter shrew and belongs to the mammal family Potamogalidae. Otter shrews are shrew-like afrotherian mammals found in sub-Saharan Africa. They are most closely related to the tenrecs ...

(''Micropotamogale lamottei''), the

West African chimpanzee The western chimpanzee or West African chimpanzee (''Pan troglodytes verus'') is a Critically Endangered subspecies of the common chimpanzee. It inhabits western Africa, specifically Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Senegal, Ghana, Guinea-B ...

(''Pan troglodytes verus''), the

Diana monkey The Diana monkey (''Cercopithecus diana'') is an Old World monkey found in the high canopy forests in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and western Côte d’Ivoire Named for its white brow which is said to resemble the bow of the Roman goddess Diana, thi ...

(''Cercopithecus diana diana'') and the Sierra Leone prinia (''Schistolais leontica''), a bird of the West African highlands known from only three other sites in the world. Frog ''

Hylarana fonensis ''Amnirana fonensis'' is a species of frog in the family Ranidae. It is endemic to Simandou, Guinea. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests. It is threatened by habitat loss Habitat destruction (also termed h ...

'' is known from nowhere else. The area has so far been protected by relative isolation but its

biodiversity Biodiversity is the variability of life, life on Earth. It can be measured on various levels. There is for example genetic variability, species diversity, ecosystem diversity and Phylogenetics, phylogenetic diversity. Diversity is not distribut ...

is now threatened by the encroachment of agriculture, unregulated

bushmeat Bushmeat is meat from wildlife species that are Hunting, hunted for human consumption. Bushmeat represents a primary source of animal protein and a cash-earning commodity in poor and rural communities of humid tropical forest regions of the worl ...

hunting,

logging Logging is the process of cutting, processing, and moving trees to a location for transport. It may include skidder, skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or trunk (botany), logs onto logging truck, trucksLand tenure In Common law#History, common law systems, land tenure, from the French verb "" means "to hold", is the legal regime in which land "owned" by an individual is possessed by someone else who is said to "hold" the land, based on an agreement betw ...

conflicts and ecologically destructive

subsistence farming Subsistence agriculture occurs when farmers grow crops on smallholdings to meet the needs of themselves and their families. Subsistence agriculturalists target farm output for survival and for mostly local requirements. Planting decisions occ ...

practices (

slash and burn Slash-and-burn agriculture is a form of shifting cultivation that involves the cutting and burning of plants in a forest or woodland to create a field called a swidden. The method begins by cutting down the trees and woody plants in an area. T ...

agriculture), exacerbated by poverty, also pose problems for the environment. The range has two classified forests: Pic de Fon, designated in 1953, with an area of 256 km², and Pic de Tibé, designated in 1945, with an area of 60.75 km²."2014 United Nations List of Protected areas of Guinea (data based on the WDPA October release)" Protected Planet. Accessed 9 October 2015

/ref>

Mining

Simandou has the potential to become the site of the largest integrated iron-ore mine and infrastructure project ever developed in Africa, consisting of a large new source of iron ore and creating a 650 km new railway to the Guinean coast at

Matakong Matakong is an island just off the coast of Guinea between the capital Conakry and the Sierra Leone border. Nomenclature Matakong is also called Matakan. Transport Matakong is the proposed port terminus of the heavy duty standard gauge Tra ...

. However, the potentially lucrative blocks I and II were mired for several years later in litigation of possible corruption. This corruption, which occurred through the use of bribery involved two Western foreign companies - Rio Tinto, a British-Australian company and

BSGR Beny Steinmetz (; born 2 April 1956) is an Israeli businessman and entrepreneur, with a focus on the mining, energy, real estate and diamond-mining industries. He has been convicted of corrupt and illegal business practices in multiple countries ...

. Around 2015, the mining project seemed to have been sidelined due to dwindling global iron demand.Africa Confidential article March 2015
/ref> However, a version of the full original mining project was re-instated in late 2019Plan back on track - article of 5th December 2019
/ref> and confirmed in 2020 with the signing of a new agreementSMB-Winning consortium deal
/ref> with the Chinese company SMB-Winning.

Namesake

There is a town of the same name in nearby Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast). This town is not to be confused with Siamandou further to the west.

References

External links

Rio Tinto Simandou website home page
accessed 25 December 2010

accessed 25 December 2010 * ttps://web.archive.org/web/20080613081112/http://www.riotintoironore.com/ENG/operations/301_simandou.asp Rio Tinto Iron Ore website Simandou page accessed 25 December 2010
"Mining Groups Target West Africa", by William Macnamara, FT.com, 18.5.2010
site accessed 25 December 2010, page now behind payscreen * {{WWF ecoregion, id=at0114, name=Guinean montane forests, accessdate=12 December 2010 Afromontane Mountain ranges of Guinea Guinean montane forests Rail transport in Guinea