0.2% = 4 mines + Wind River Road

Airstrip on Bonnet Plume River.

Documents obtained by the Yukon Conservation Society through access to information show the government is paving the way for up to four mines and an all-season road in the Wind-Bonnet Plume River region of the Peel watershed.

Although the region is slated for protection under the Peel commission’s final recommended plan, the government’s new land use designation, allowing .2% surface disturbance in that area, means major industrial development, says the Conservation Society.

“Through the recent Peel consultations, and again in the budget speech, government has said that their proposed ceiling of .2% surface disturbance in restricted use wilderness areas in the Peel watershed would protect tourism and wildlife,” said executive director Karen Baltgailis in a news release.

But after doing the math, she said the government’s spin doesn’t add up.

“A .2% disturbance footprint in the Wind-Bonnet Plume landscape management unit would allow 3,834 hectares of disturbance. This would allow an all-season haul road up the entire length of the Wind River and four or more mines.”

The Wind-Bonnet Plume region has been the most contentious area in the seven-year land use planning process.

Not only is it heavily used for recreation, tourism and hunting, it’s rich in First Nations culture and history. It is critical habitat for an array of wildlife, including the Bonnet Plume caribou herd, mountain sheep and grizzly bears.

It’s also where the 2006-07 uranium claim staking rush occurred and has several coal exploration permits on the books.

That’s likely why it was chosen by the government as the place to put a hypothetical open pit mine, power plant and all-season road during a planning exercise last May.

According to the government documents, one afternoon more than a dozen bureaucrats, mostly from Energy, Mines and Resources, gathered in a boardroom to put the government’s newly-dreamed-up land use designation to the test.

Designed “to nestle” between the final recommended Peel plan’s protected areas and integrated management areas, the “enhanced management area” (later known as the “restricted use wilderness area”) provided a way “to manage and minimize the impact on key ecological and wilderness values in areas where the issuance of surface and subsurface rights is permitted.”

The selling point – only .2% of these new land designation areas would ever be developed.

In the case of the government’s hypothetical mine – which it gave a lifespan of 65 years and a “direct footprint” of 600 hectares – the threshold of .2% disturbance would allow development to go ahead.

They figured it would take 25 years from the time the first of the 3,000 claims were staked through to mine production. That included years of drilling, trenching, blasting and other exploration activities. Also construction of the mine, developing “nearby natural gas or coal gasification resources” to power the industrial complex and building a 132-kilometre all-season road. The mine would then run for 20 years and take another 20 years to clean up.

But even government officials were skeptical about some of the assumptions made.

“This doesn’t reflect what is happening in the rest of the territory or likely to happen in the Peel; multiple, air-supported exploration projects over large areas of promising mineral potential for several years (or more) before a possible mine location is identified,” wrote one official in an email.

“Neither scenario requires low flights over key remote rivers which in the real world is very likely given the location of existing claims, airstrips and the ability to land on gravel bars.

“In the Peel, it will be intense, wide-spread, multi-year, air-supported exploration that has the most potential to seriously impact tourism and guided hunting businesses long before a mine and road access are considered.”

Click here to read the documents.