7/27/2019 Yukon Mining

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/yukon-mining 1/2

By Bethany Bella  I’m sure I’m not the only one

who thinks of red-nosed reindeer

and prancing Christmas elves

whenever I hear the word ‘Yu-

kon.’ And just like the gripping

 phrase from the beloved holiday

cartoon, this northern paradise

of Yukon, Canada is disap- pearing faster than a bumbling

snow-monster descending into an

icy oblivion.

Modern mining technologies

have made this remote landscape

the pinnacle for a gold miners’

incurable lust, capitalizing on the

region’s long-preserved, moun-

tain-trapped deposits. Wedged

 between Alaska and the western

strip of Canada, the Yukon ex-

 panse only hosts 37,000 inhabi-

tants in roughly the same size as

the state of California. Forests,

mountains, wetlands, and lakes

are all sprinkled throughout the

vast tundra, providing habitatsfor a variety of arctic wildlife,

as well as a shelter for protable

mineral ores.

The recent spike in Yu-

kon-derived deposits isn’t a rst

for the area. In the 1870s, pros-

 pectors began scoping out the

mountainous expanse, scurrying

in and out of rocky crevices in

search for the ultimate ‘get-rich-

quick’ bounty of gold. Along

came 1896, the beginning of the

 boom, so to speak. Soon after

the golden exclamation reached

the lower 48 states, hundreds of

men began boarding ships to the

 banks of the Yukon and KlondikeRivers, eager to strip the land of

all its impurities. Within a few

short months, a freshly-leveled

forest became the site of Yukon

Territory’s capital, Dawson City,

a metropolis of 30,000 gruff,

desperate miners, offering

electricity, running water, and

telecommunications. In 1899,

Yukon’s mining epicenterdiverged farther down the

riverbed, and by 1953 was

left mostly uninhabited.

 Nevertheless, the recent

demand for mineral resourc-

es – like gold, zinc, copper,

along with other valuables

 – has exposed the region of

Yukon once more to man’s

unmerciful pickaxe, or more

accurately, his bulldozer andround of explosives.

“This is the biggest

geo-chemical exploration

 project on the planet right

now,” Shawn Ryan, a current

Yukon prospector, claimed, “and

maybe in history.”

7/27/2019 Yukon Mining

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/yukon-mining 2/2

  Since 1996, Ryan and

his crew of excavators have

staked nearly 55,000 claims

across Yukon’s sprawling

terrain, foraging for the next

golden opportunity – quiteliterally. But many mod-

ern-day miners have contin-

ued to act under an unsus-

tainable mentality, subjecting

the Earth to hazardous

waste-chemicals, known in

the environmental communi-

ty as acid mine drainage, and

exploiting lands once sacred

to the indigenous tribes of

Canada.“The mining industry

always makes big promises,

 but now we have closed mines

in the Yukon that are leaking

arsenic and cyanide and lead.

Instead of paying to clean up

the mess, the companies just

go bankrupt,” Dave Loeks,

chairman of the Peel Watershed

Planning Commission, said.  Only about 13 percent of

the Yukon’s land area is strict-

ly off-limits, while almost

any adult can stake a claim, in

 pursuit of his destined, untold

riches. This rush for resources is

 jeopardizing the land’s primi-

tive dwellers, individuals who

rely upon the environment’s an-

imals and ecosystems to sustain

them and their culture.

“The people coming up and

taking out minerals aren’t ask-

ing what happens to the animals

we hunt, the sh we eat, thetopsoil that holds it all togeth-

er,” Trish Hume, a member of

the Champagne and Aishihik

First Nations, said. “And when

the boom is over, how does our

tiny popula-

tion afford to

clean up the

toxic mess?”

The vast

Yukon iscurrently

in a state

of ux,

 balancing

 precarious-

ly between

the role of a

sustainable

dwelling and

an exploited mining abandon.

Environmental advocates are

 pressuring Washington ofcials

to reconsider the development

 plans for this territory, arguing

that in this century, the envi-

ronmental consequences far

outweigh the greed of such

disrupting mining companies,

whose narrow-minded quest has prevented them from beholding

a landscape of unaltered beauty.

“Wherever you go, there’s

 just mountains and more

mountains, too many to name,

too many to count,” Morgan

Fraughton, a prospector man-

ager, said. “And I think, What

if one of them disappeared?

Would it really make a differ-

ence?”We may soon nd out.

 For more on this issue, read

Tom Clynes’ feature on the

Yukon Territory in the February

2014 issue of the National Geo-

 graphic Magazine.