Salmon Rivers Under Siege
Too much, too soon threatens sacred headwaters & Taku watershed
'Sludge', a serious type of mine waste created after treating acidic water, at the close Equity Silver Mine, 2005. Photo by Carrie Slanina.
For thousands of years, the main transformations in Canada's wild salmon rivers have been changing seasons and annual migrations across mountains, skies and waters.
But over the last century, industrial development has radically transformed many of these once mighty salmon rivers to the point where only a handful remain relatively unscathed. Now the last of these are also threatened as demand for energy and commodities such as gold, silver and copper is bringing global markets and mineral exploration to the last remote wild watersheds of northwest BC.
Individually, the threats to these rivers are great, but the gravity of the threats is best understood in light of the cumulative developments proposed across the region. Once transmission lines and resource roads are in place, there will be no limits to the pace and scale of industrial mining and energy development. Multiple industrial projects reduce an ecosystem's ability to cope with change. Rapid development can also create boom and bust economies and social dysfunction in small communities.
Sacred Headwaters
The Sacred Headwaters — the origin of the Nass, Skeena and Stikine Rivers — are facing multiple resource development projects, all of which require the addition of infrastructure that will then spawn further industrial development. Though the Iskut and Tahltan First Nations are not opposed to all development, they are demanding an appropriate pace and scale of development for their traditional territory and that sensitive cultures are protected.
Three fossil fuel energy projects critically threaten the Sacred Headwaters: Fortune Minerals Ines Mount Klappan Coal project, WestHawk Development Corporation's Groundhog Coal project and Shell Canada's Klappan Coalbed Methane project. These companies propose new roads, open pit coal mines, coal-fired power plants and a plethora of well sites to extract coalbed methane on the edge of the Spatsizi Plateau Wilderness Park, a world-class protected area. Coalbed methane extraction fragments the land, pollutes the air and water, and is a major contributor to climate change. These projects would sully this wild landscape, contribute to global pollution, and impact local cultural practices.
Todagin Mountain. Photo by Ramsay Bourquin.
Kayaker on Great Glacier Lake iceberg. Photo by J. Bourquin.
Another project, the Red Chris Mine on Todagin Mountain, has received its provincial Environmental Certificate in spite of clear risks of environmental and cultural harm. This copper-gold mine site sits only 18 km from the community of Iskut, at the head of the Iskut River, a major tributary of the Stikine. Todagin also hosts the world's largest lambing population of Stone Sheep. Understandably, this mine is a serious concern for local residents.
All of these projects require power which currently does not extend this far along the Stewart-Cassiar Highway. Construction and operation of new power lines could fragment and harm fish and wildlife habitats as well as fuel more mining project proposals in the region.
The Taku Watershed
The Taku River is at risk of being devastated by rapid, short-sighted industrial development. The main threat comes from hard rock mining, and the access, pollution and economic impact issues that follow.
The most immediate threat is the proposal by Redfern Resources to access and reopen the Tulsequah Chief mine site. The Tulsequah is on the traditional territory of the Taku River Tlingit First Nation. Operating and accessing the mine would impact their land and their lifestyle in addition to impacting local biodiversity through toxic drainage and new transportation impacts that figuratively and literally pave the way for other industrial developments. Redfern has proposed two options for access to the Tulsequah Chief site. One is the construction of a 160 km access road, the other is to access the sites by barge up the Taku River. Constructing a road into the heart of this region would be devastating to caribou, salmon and local cultural practices, and it would be a wedge to open the area to further devastation. Barging enhances the potential for developing other projects, such as the nearby Big Bull (Redfern) and New Polaris (Canarc Resource Corp) mines, and has its own slate of potential biodiversity impacts.
Neither plan addresses the impacts that would result from the mine's tailings being stored in the ecologically rich and biologically sensitive Shazah Slough, and neither plan alleviates concern over the toxic acid mine drainage emanating from the site.
There is one other potential access route into the Taku: a non-public road in the south of the watershed was built to access the former Golden Bear Mine. This is the only existing road in the Taku. The mine has since closed, but the road is now being used for mineral exploration and could be used to support further industrial access.
The Taku requires permanent conservation designations and no-road areas to maintain its unique values as an intact watershed. Industrial development would undermine conservation values in this incredible and increasingly important region.
