Horrifically deadly and widely implemented on a global scale, landmines continue to speckle the landscape of current and past battlefields. And while effective in a passive sense, the hardware planted beneath the soil persists long after the inevitable conclusion of war. Innocents and combatants who survive the barrage of bullets and bombs are left with a sadistic game of whack-a-mole – including the wild and domesticated animals.
Rudimentary explosives first appeared in China as early as the Song Dynasty. Continued development eventually gave rise to the modern pressure-activated landmine, which appeared on the battlefields of theAmerican Civil War. Seen as a cowardly method of waging war at the time, the improvised explosive devices continued to gain popularity.
Since the Vietnam War, many variants of mines have been concocted and deployed in the field. This includes the proliferation of anti-personnel and anti-vehicle explosives. For the purposes of this piece, we will focus on anti-personnel mines due to their sensitivity and tendency to detonate with less pressure applied.
The production, transfer, and use of anti-personnel landmines have been greatly reduced, notably following the signing of the 1997 Ottawa Treaty, which specifically addresses the use of mines, foreign and domestic. Many nations agreed to the treaty, though it excludes the signatures of China, Russia, and the U.S.
However, mines continue to be used in modern theaters of war, and the historic placement of mines predates 1997, meaning an unknown number of AP mines patiently wait across the planet for a specific amount of pressure to be applied. And these explosives do not discriminate – hoof or foot, they are ready to go.
Post-conflict wildlife interactions with landmines have largely remained unstudied, but specific negative interactions have been documented. Famously, in the case of “Mosha,” the Thai elephant that stepped on a mine following their use during a conflict between Myanmar and Thailand. The mine blew half of her front leg off while walking through the jungle on the border of the two nations. Mosha found refuge at a Thai sanctuary, where a prosthetic leg was built for her.
In a shortBBC video, host Michael Portillo describes the border between Myanmar and Thailand as “littered with landmines.” Few elephants are as fortunate as Mosha; many die immediately or succumb to infection.
According to theConflict and Environmental Observatory, for the 20 years that followed the conclusion of the Vietnam War, “At least 40,000 animals were killed by unexploded landmines.”
Liberally used in many conflicts and notoriously untracked, these weapons strike fear into the communities near them and continue to kill and maim, long after the guns have been put down. Their indiscriminate nature was reported on by theNew York Timesin 2001.
Author Seth Mydans wrote, “Suffering is shared by injured animals of all sorts, in many countries. According to press reports, land mines have killed camels in western China, tigers in Cambodia, water buffalo in Vietnam, elephants in Sri Lanka and gazelles in Libya. Snow leopards have reportedly been killed in Afghanistan; bears, deer and foxes in Croatia; blue sheep and musk deer in Kashmir.
Source: Antiwar.com
