page_title: Guano
section_title: Mining
hierarchical_section_title: Guano / Mining
caption_attribution_description: English: Workers shoveling guano onto a cart
context_page_description: Guano is the accumulated excrement of seabirds and bats. As a manure, guano is a highly effective fertilizer due to its exceptionally high content of nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium: key nutrients essential for plant growth. Guano was also, to a lesser extent, sought for the production of gunpowder and other explosive materials.
  The 19th-century guano trade played a pivotal role in the development of modern input-intensive farming, but its demand began to decline after the discovery of the Haber–Bosch process of nitrogen fixing led to the production of synthetic fertilizers. The demand for guano spurred the human colonization of remote bird islands in many parts of the world, resulting in some of the first examples of U.S. colonialism and the expansion of the British Empire.
  The guano mining process resulted in ecological degradation through the loss of millions of seabirds. Unsustainable guano mining in caves alters cave shape, causing bats to abandon the roost. Guano mining also involved the poor treatment and enslavement of workers such as Chinese immigrants, Native Hawaiians, and African diaspora.
  Guano is ecologically important due to its role in dispersing nutrients.
caption: Workers load guano onto a cart in 1865
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