In just 10 years, the mining and exploration industry has evolved considerably and is making a real effort to build bridges with environmental concern.
Here in the Yukon, the industry has designed, developed and is building state-of-the-art drills that are a fraction of the weight of previous designs and can be flown into their target areas using a small helicopter with minimal impact to the environment.
Also based here, we have leading-edge technologies that have researched and developed down-hole survey systems and specialized ice-drilling technologies for the mining sector, but also for retrieving ice cores critical to understanding climate change in places like the St. Elias Range and Antarctica.
Remember, the mining sector also has the expertise and technologies in understanding recycling
metals - of which we have a long way to go. The Yukon should keep these industries at home so they are allowed to grow in a constructive form with environmental concern - encouraging them to leave and explore in underdeveloped, unstable countries will not cause them to evolve in a favorable way in the global sense - we’ve seen this time and time again. “Pollution knows no boundaries,” said David Suzuki.
Anti-mining groups, such as the Peel River Watershed Commission, are discouraging their presence by reducing land availability on an unprecedented scale - the proposed land area to be ‘protected’ is the size of the Netherlands.
They are burning bridges - it’s selfish, and it will take real jobs from real Yukoners in the exploration and mining sector.
We hear about negative news all the time. The media loves to pick on the mining/exploration business. Here’s good news that never gets reported about the mining-exploration industry, and perhaps some reasons why the Peel Watershed Planning Committee people shouldn’t take the industry for granted:
What about all the people that enjoy a good rush, in a kayak or canoe that had to be fashioned with iron-vanadium-tungsten-chrome hardened metal tools; perhaps some are trimmed with aluminum, or entirely made of aluminum or even petroleum byproducts, such as fiberglass and other rubbers and plastics.
Maybe they’ve pulled off to the side of the Wind River to enjoy a hot tea heated by a metal butane-charged cartridge or a naphtha hydrocarbon fuel.
Later that evening, they pitch camp and erect their aluminum-fiberglass poles that support their hi-tech nylon tents that were, without a doubt, stitched by a host of stainless steel needles clamped into an industrial sewing machine constructed of a variety of metals.
Sounds like a nice trip for the elite few that can afford it; especially the flight into the mining/outfitter-built dirt airstrip - of course the pilot topped his aluminum DeHavilland single-engine Otter with aviation fuel before taking off.
According to Tourism Industry Association statistics, the majority of tourists doing these wilderness trips won’t even be Yukoners.
What about the millions of people in cities like Vancouver, Toronto or even Frankfurt, Germany that groove to the rhythms of their favorite band or gain intrigue, humor and valuable education and information from units laced with a multitude of different metals and natural resources that include copper, tin, lead, zinc, lithium, rare earth metals, silicon dioxides, and plastics - to mention a few.
These elements are explored for and mined from minerals and hydrocarbons such as chalcopyrite, cassiterite, galena, sphalerite, spodumene, quartz and cracking refineries that produce petroleum derivatives.
Here’s the catch, folks: these have been carefully disguised as iPods and computer systems so the anti-mining groups cannot recognize them for what they really are.
Now É give this a real think.
Where are we going to get the necessary raw materials for new ‘clean’ energy technologies to build thousands of wind generators, solar panels, and electric cars.
Mining and exploration need access to the land.
Rick Zuran
Whitehorse
See more letters page 6.