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TheYukon mining boom shows no signs of slowing,but environmentalists fear forthe safety of the Peel watershed
At the turn of the 19th century it played host to the famed Klondike Gold Rush that drew thousands to the rugged wilderness in search of riches, but now the Yukon entertains a newer, more modern kind of mining rush.
For the past two years, mineral exploration here has been through the roof, nearly half-a-billion dollars spent searching for the next motherlode of gold, silver, copper, zinc, molybdenum or tungsten and nearly 200,000 claims staked.
“From July [2011] I flew 10 months worth of hard staking and we probably singlehandedly staked 25 to 30,000 claims,” said Ben Drury, a pilot with Horizon Helicopters, one of the many charter services in the Yukon that benefited from the staking craze.
“We’d show up at a remote location and there were piles and piles of staking posts stacked six feet high waiting for us, coming in a steady stream of Twin Otter [plane] loads, 500 posts at a time.”
From there, Mr. Drury would ferry prospectors into even more remote areas to gobble up the territory’s real estate ahead of the competition. Stakers like Billy Bromell were also ensconced in work, earning upwards of $500 per day driving stakes for a host of junior venture companies locked in a game so secretive that even Mr. Bromell didn’t know who he was making claims for.
From this staking surge, today more than 20% of the Yukon’s land mass is set aside for potential resource exploitation. If exploration continues at the same pace this season, that percentage could exceed more than 30. (By comparison, in Ontario – whose hinterland is a comparable treasure trove of similarly coveted minerals – just 6% has been reserved.)
It’s this rampant activity that has environmentalists such as Lewis Rifkind, the Yukon Conservation Society’s mining coordinator, concerned. Mr. Rifkind’s watchdog role keeps him busy in consultancy on some projects before the territory’s assessment branch, the Yukon Environment and Socio Economic Board, and public-advocacy duties like writing letters to the local newspapers in Whitehorse.
“You should see the map we’ve got; [staking] here is like watching a cancer spread,” Mr. Rifkind said of a web-animated graphic on the society’s website illustrating, in ominous black, a quick-time growth of mineral claims across the landscape.
“Hell, we all use minerals and metals but it’s getting nutty out there.- Outfitters are furious and tourists are paying for a wilderness experience you just don’t get when you’ve got 30 helicopters buzzing around,” he added.
It seems the only sanctuary from what Mr. Rifkind described as “rush-hour” helicopter traffic, is in the Peel watershed, a remote 68,000-square-kilometre slice of the Yukon pie that by virtue of a staking moratorium, enacted during the end of an independent commission’s deliberations to protect the region, kept exploration activity there at bay.
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