This article was produced with the support of the Local Journalism Initiative.

A draft of the much-anticipated land-use plan for the Yukon’s 40,000 square-kilometre Dawson regional planning area — a sensitive and vibrant northern landscape of cultural importance to the Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin First Nation — is due to be released June 15 by the Dawson Regional Planning Commission.

Comprised of salmon-rich rivers, vital caribou habitat and wetlands, which support a wide variety of species from cranberries to moose, the Dawson region is also ground zero for the territory’s bustling placer mining industry, raising questions about how and how much of the landscape should be protected from ongoing and future development.

Under Yukon’s 1990 Umbrella Final Agreement, Yukon is obligated to craft landscape plans in partnership with First Nations to determine the nature and extent of natural resource management and industry in First Nations territories.

In part because of industry interests, the Dawson land use plan has dragged along for many years as mining has carried on in sensitive riverbeds and wetlands. Already the process has hints of the conflict between the mining industry and conservation efforts that stymied the Peel watershed regional land use plan, which ended up being hashed out in the Supreme Court of Canada after a 15-year legal quagmire. 

At the heart of concerns surrounding the fate of the Dawson is the high level of placer mining operations already taking place in the region, and how legacy mining claims grandfathered into the region will impact land use plans going forward.Roberta Joseph, Chief for the Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin, says just like with the Peel Watershed, when the Dawson planning process began, there was already a “high level of staking taking place.”

Despite repeated calls from the Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin, other First Nations and conservationists, mineral staking has been and still is permitted in the Dawson region, Joseph says, adding her government had been vying for a number of mining withdrawals for different areas in its traditional territory. But Joseph says despite repeated calls for these withdrawals — and some small, late concessions — the discussion with the Yukon government about potential no-go zones for mining just “hasn’t evolved.” 

The Peel Watershed land use plan: ‘the lesson hasn’t been learned’

If the protracted legal battle over the Peel demonstrated anything, it’s that mining withdrawals hold the power to make or break land use plans.

When the Peel plan was first drafted, it came with a recommendation to protect 80 per cent of the watershed from industry. That recommendation was scrapped by the then-Yukon Party government, which floated a new recommendation to protect just 29 per cent of the area from development. The proposal enraged Yukon First Nations and environmentalists, fuelling a legal battle that was eventually resolved in 2017 in a landmark Supreme Court ruling. The judges found that by reducing the amount of conserved areas in the Peel’s land use plan, the territorial government had failed to honour its Treaty obligations to First Nations.

Planning for the Dawson region began as negotiations for the Peel were already underway, with a commission first engaging in the planning process between 2010 and 2014. But the Dawson process was put on the backburner while the Peel challenge played out. 

The Dawson Region Planning Commission was reestablished in November 2018 and has been working ever since on a much-anticipated draft plan. The delays in the process have contributed to tensions around the ongoing level of mineral staking and mining projects that have continued unabated in the Dawson region for the last decade.

Pleas for a pause on claims staking and exploration have gone unheeded, raising questions about how the Dawson planning process will avoid the pitfalls of which beleaguered the Peel plan. Those questions were heightened when Art Webster, the former vice chair of the planning commission publicly resigned. He told The Narwhal the resistance to pausing industry “defeats the purpose of having a land planning process.” 

The impacts of placer mining are seen alongside the Indian River, near Quartz Creek, Yukon. The Indian River is heavily impacted by decades of placer mining which has not paused for development of the Dawson land use planning process. Photo: Malkolm Boothroyd / CPAWS Yukon

In response to concerns from environmental groups and First Nations, particularly the Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin, the government finally agreed in March to preemptively withdraw approximately 12 per cent of the Dawson planning area from staking — but noted the moratoriums are temporary, pending recommendations from the planning commission. 

Environment minister Pauline Frost said the withdrawals were designed to bring down tensions surrounding what will be mined and what will be protected in the Dawson. 

 “This will minimize future land-use conflicts in areas that are likely candidates for conservation,” Frost said in a statement.

“Compared to the Peel process, (the) Government of Yukon acted more quickly in placing staking withdrawals,” in the Dawson, Yukon Department of Energy, Mines and Resources representative Rachel Veinott-McKeough told The Narwhal via email.

Some onlookers, however, feel this gesture lacked the necessary gusto — and timing — to make much difference in the overall process. 

It’s “far too little, and too late,” Webster said of the withdrawals in an interview with Yukon News.

A day after the withdrawals were announced, the Yukon branch of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) expressed its disappointment, calling it a “failure to implement meaningful withdrawal … which echoes the mistakes made during the Peel Watershed planning process.” 

“Going into this plan, we had really hoped — no, actually, we had really expected — that the government wouldn’t repeat the same mistakes it had made in the Peel Watershed, where staking wasn’t withdrawn until well into the planning process,” Randi Newton, conservation coordinator for CPAWS, told The Narwhal. 

“Unfortunately, the lesson hasn’t been learned.” 

Yukon pushed to develop protections for irreplaceable wetlands threatened by mining

Jocelyn Joe-Strack, Daqualama, Indigenous research chair at Yukon University and a member of the Wolf Clan of Champagne-Aishihik First Nation, shares the sentiment.

“I do not have confidence that the Dawson planning process, and the upcoming Dawson draft plan, will have honored the spirit and intent of the Umbrella Final Agreement,” Joe-Strack says. “And I do believe it will be a repeat of the Peel.”

By allowing staking up to and during the planning process, the Yukon government is providing a way for mineral claims to be “grandfathered” in, Sebastian Jones, long-time West-Dawson resident and fish, wildlife and habitat analyst for the Yukon Conservation Society, tells The Narwhal. This fundamentally shapes how land use plans and protected areas are laid out, he says. 

The government’s reluctance to institute staking moratoriums prior to land-use planning goes all the way back to the creation of Tombstone Territorial Park, which was officially designated in 2000, he says. During this time developers, fearing potential withdrawals, began a “flurry” of staking in the area. 

“That was the first time we saw mineral claims being staked during a planning process,” Jones says. “It actually changed the shape of Tombstone Park, because this is one of the first times the mineral industry was looking at land being alienated from mineral exploration and development.”

Jones says that while the government was “progressive at the time,” but “by the time they got their poop in a group and withdrew (Tombstone) from staking, the damage had already been done.” 

“There are still active claims in Tombstone and they’re a running sore” in the park, which is located within the Dawson regional area, Jones says. 

Given this history — and the fact that much of the area around Dawson City proper is already heavily staked — it wasn’t a “massive ask” to withdraw areas from staking in the Dawson region while the plan was being developed, Jones says.

“I really don’t understand why the Yukon government was so reluctant to make these withdrawals.” 

A Yukon company is proposing a quartz exploration project in Antimony Creek, near Tombstone Territorial Park, pictured above, which is now paused as the Dawson land use process is underway. Photo: Peter Mather

More recently, the direct impact of continued staking has flared up in the Antimony Creek area, next door to Tombstone. Prior to the government’s temporary withdrawal, both the Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin and the First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun cited serious concerns around a proposed quartz exploration project at Antimony Creek, located in both nations’ traditional territories. Both nations have said the area is of high cultural and subsistence importance to them and that they consider permitting new development on their lands before the Dawson land use planning is complete to be a violation of their Treaty Rights.

Their concerns triggered a pause on the project and a request for more information has been sent from the Yukon Environmental Socio-economic Assessment Board (YESAB) to the project’s proponent, Dawson City-based Ryanwood Exploration Inc., although that is not unusual at this stage of the process, says Lewis Rifkind, mining analyst for the Yukon Conservation Society. When the government finally withdrew the 12 per cent of the Dawson regional area from staking, it included the Antimony Creek area — but, as the map shows, the controversial claim in question still exists, because it was granted prior to the exclusion, Rifkind notes. 

Moreover, if the Yukon assessment board is satisfied with the proponent, it could, in theory, allow the project to move forward as the land planning takes place, Rifkind says, because the right to work on existing, approved projects hasn’t been pulled, only the ability to stake new ones. 

“They’ve withdrawn staking rights, but [that claim] is grandfathered in,” Rifkind told The Narwhal. 

In the meantime, Joseph says the pause in the Antimony Creek project is the direct result of Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin First Nation’s concerns.

“We hope that the permitting and licensing agencies take into account that there is active land use planning in the area,” she says.

Similar issues arose in the case of the Peel, which saw a land use plan for the watershed finally signed in 2019. Claims that exist in now-protected areas can’t be developed, Jones says, so most owners have likely “written them off.” But, Jones notes, those claims haven’t been formally extinguished, but rather left “in limbo.” 

“They haven’t been grandfathered in — but they haven’t been grandfathered out, either,” Jones says.

“To me, that really speaks to the importance of having land use plans in place.”

Curing the ‘colonial hangover’: how Yukon First Nations became trailblazers of Indigenous governance

Yukon mining system ‘exploitative, colonial’: expert

The issue extends far beyond the Dawson region. In recent months, Carcross/Tagish First Nation filed a suit against the Yukon government regarding the approval of two subdivision applications on their traditional territory, which the First Nation says it was not adequately consulted about, an action the First Nation says is in contravention of their final agreement. 

Days later, on March 15, the First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun also launched a suit against the Yukon government for granting advanced mineral exploration rights in the Tsé Tagé (Beaver River) watershed, where land use planning is underway but is not yet completed. The First Nation not only claims this is contrary to the practicality and spirit of the land use planning process, but that it actively undermines that process and is “disrespectful.” 

Newton says allowing staking or mineral development to take place on landscapes where land use planning is underway creates uncertainty for industry and First Nations, calling it “a strange situation of the government’s own making.” 

“I don’t understand the logic of it,” Newton says. “I think you could call it a gap — or a flaw — in our current legislation.”

“Really, the ideal situation would be either a withdrawal of staking and development — a temporary one — while planning is going on. Or, if staking is permitted, that it’s really clear … if there’s going to be limits set on development.”

This uncertainty was a major point of conflict in the Peel land process; the Yukon government does not intend to compensate the grandfathered claim holders in that region, much to the consternation of the Yukon Chamber of Mines. 

Veinott-McKeough, from the Yukon department of energy, notes neither the Umbrella Final Agreement nor the First Nation Final Agreements state mineral staking “should be withdrawn, or development not permitted before regional land use plans are finalized for an area.”

“Both the Yukon Placer Mining Act and the Quartz Mining Act permit free-entry staking unless there is a withdrawal order that restricts staking,” Veinott-McKeough said in an email. “Staking withdrawals have been put in place for a number of reasons over the years, including for land use planning processes in place.” 

Once mineral tenure is assigned through staking, an assessment and authorization process must be satisfied before any development can commence, she added. “The assessment considers social and environmental impacts, and authorization is not granted until there has been consultation with the affected First Nations, and mitigations are in place for potential impacts.”

“It’s all about ensuring that we take care of the land, and we come to understand the needs of the land … “

The government assumes they have authority over all Crown land, Joe-Strack says, adding several previous governments have tried to assert that assumption. “But it’s untrue … it’s to be managed with the First Nations.”

Jones says the grounds on which the government has proceeded with staking during the land use planning process is “shaky.”

“Basically, no one has ever tried (the government) on it,” Jones says.

 He points to the free-entry staking system as the root of this issue, something he described as “an anachronism” — one that will likely change in the future, even though mining interests view alterations to it as “a threat” to the way they’ve always done things in the territory and will “go down kicking and screaming” to try to keep it the way it is. 

The newly released Yukon Mineral Development Strategy recommended the Yukon government modify “the free-entry staking system to be consistent with Yukon’s modern treaties, court-guided agreements and case law.” 

Joe-Strack takes an all around more critical look at the land planning process in Yukon; the land planning process itself, as it has been applied, runs counter to the philosophies of the First Nations on whose land it takes place, she says, with much of the work, done by people who have never set foot on the land they are making such big and powerful recommendations about. This system itself is “map-based, exploitive” and “colonial” in nature, she says. 

“The First Nation approach to land planning is a complete flip of the Western approach to land planning,” she says, adding that the word ‘use’ should be removed from the idea of land use planning, so that it instead becomes about “obligation and responsibility” to both the land and the people who will live on it, now and in the future. 

“It’s all about ensuring that we take care of the land, and we come to understand the needs of the land, so we can … nurture it, and in turn, be nurtured by it … and (move) forward to the type of society that we would like to create for our children, that sees them living closer and more honorably and equitably with the land,” she says. “That is a very, very big difference.”

Still, Joe-Strack is optimistic and believes that change is on the horizon. 

“It’s really disheartening to see these overt colonial mentalities being carried out. It’s really frustrating — but change is coming,” she says, adding that she believes in the near future this way of thinking will not only no longer be “acceptable” but “shamed.” 

“I still have a lot of hope — and a lot of patience.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This story was made possible by funding through the Local Journalism Initiative.

An election campaign is well underway in Yukon, and the outcome at the polls on April 12 could have serious impacts for the environment in the territory.

The election follows multiple political shake-ups in Yukon: Kate White’s ascension to leadership of the Yukon NDP following the retirement of long-time party leader Liz Hanson; Mayo-Tatchun representative Don Hutton’s abrupt defection from the Yukon Liberals to run as an independent; and the decision by the Green Party — which did not win a single seat in the territory in the last two elections — to field no candidates for the first time in more than a decade. 

The election also comes at a time of serious upheaval for the territory; although Yukoners have been spared many of the more serious realities of the COVID-19 pandemic seen in other parts of the country, travel bans and mandatory quarantines have left the local tourism industry reeling.

More broadly, the territory is grappling with the challenge of balancing First Nations rights and land use with the interests of business and development. Over the past month, two First Nations have launched lawsuits against the government over land use planning issues in their traditional territories.  

To get a better sense of what’s at stake, The Narwhal reached out to the three parties — Yukon Party leader Currie Dixon, Yukon NDP leader Kate White and the Liberal Party’s John Streicker, who served as minister of community services in the incumbent Liberal government — to see where they stand on three fundamental Yukon environmental issues: land use planning, clean energy development and climate change.

In advance of Yukon’s April 12 election, The Narwhal spoke to NDP Party leader Kate White, Yukon Party leader Currie Dixon and former minister of community services for the incumbent Liberal Party, John Streicker. Photo: Yukon Assembly and Currie Dixon. Graphic: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Where the parties stand on Yukon’s hot-button issue: land use planning

Land use planning is an area of constant friction among proponents of resource extraction, First Nations and conservationists.

Under Yukon’s unique agreement with First Nations, the territory is obligated to create land use plans that determine which lands are set aside for protection and which areas will remain open to industry, road building and other forms of development.

Previous missteps with land use plans have landed the Yukon government in hot water. The land use planning for the Peel watershed, for example, precipitated a 15-year legal battle that wound up in Canada’s Supreme Court, where judges ruled the government failed to adequately consult First Nations when deciding how much of the region would be open to industrial development. 

Yukoners are watching the process unfold in the Dawson region, where the government has allowed mineral staking to continue before certain ecologically sensitive areas can be set aside for protection. 

This could incentivize would-be miners and developers to snap up stakes in areas that would likely be protected under the future plan. Such claims can be grandfathered into land use plans, Sebastian Jones, wildlife and habitat analyst for the Yukon Conservation Society, told The Narwhal. That’s something the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation and the First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun have already objected to in the Antimony Creek area near Tombstone Territorial Park. 

Dixon acknowledges that land use planning in the Peel is something the Yukon Party, which was in power in the territory from 2002 to 2016, “did not get right.” 

A timeline of Yukon government since the territory became independent after 1975. Illustration: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Recent land use challenges and lawsuits by First Nations stem from decisions made by the Liberal government, which in 2016 campaigned on strong government-to-government relations and consultation with First Nation. 

In a recent post on the Yukon Liberal Party’s website, incumbent Premier Sandy Silver made an explicit commitment to pursue “respectful, strong partnerships with First Nations.” The party’s 2021 platform outlines plans to increase regulatory clarity for mineral developers while also “recognizing the importance of land use planning.”

Streicker said recent controversy over land use plans is not for the Liberal Party’s lack of effort or success, although he admitted there have been a few “kinks” in the process. 

“If you were to look back over time and say, ‘Have we worked hard at working respectfully with First Nation governments?’ I think, yes, it’s one of our biggest achievements,” Streicker said. “Does it mean that we haven’t had tension and missteps along the way? No. But I really do believe there has been a significant shift on that front.” 

If re-elected, the Liberals intend to continue with the Dawson land use plan. Prior to the start of the election campaign, the government withdrew some areas in the Dawson from mineral staking and the Liberals have committed to further withdrawals once planning is completed. 

“It’s a commitment in our platform to do more land use planning broadly … we’re going to invest heavily in land use planning for the territory,” Streicker said.  

For the Yukon NDP, land use planning and resource development must have the “free, prior and informed consent,” of Indigenous Peoples, as outlined by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), White said.

“UNDRIP isn’t just a document — it’s a commitment and it has to change our relationships, how we behave, from a government-to-government basis,” she said.

“And — this is an important note — I, as the colonial government, can’t say (for a First Nation) what consent is.”

The Yukon NDP’s 2021 election platform states that land use plans are the “basis for sustainable development in the Yukon” and commits to “protecting at least 50 per cent of the Yukon’s land and waters in partnership with First Nations and the Inuvialuit through land use planning and other available measures.”

White says the party also intends to make “strong commitments” to protect wetlands in the territory, bringing “industrial use” — meaning resource extraction projects like mining — to a “zero” in these areas.

The Ogilvie mountains spread out in the Peel watershed where 67,431 square kilometres of ecologically sensitive land are protected under a land use plan. Photo: Peter Mather

Dixon, who was voted in as Yukon Party leader in May 2020, said although his party has “a pretty strong record when it comes to the implementation of land claims and setting up of new protected areas throughout the territory,” it needs to do a better job of working with Yukon First Nations, particularly at the government-to-government level.

The Yukon Party’s 2021 election platform mentions an explicit promise to complete the Dawson land use planning process only in a section devoted to the party’s commitment to mining. However, the platform also includes numerous commitments to advancing the interests and economic opportunities of First Nations in the spirit of reconciliation.

“I think now as we go forward with land use planning throughout the territory, we — all Yukon, government, First Nations and others — all have a much better sense of what the process is supposed to look like, and how we all need to engage it,” Dixon said. “I think, having learned those lessons, and having had that experience, we will be well positioned to move ahead in a much more collaborative and effective way.”

Reducing Yukon’s reliance on fossil fuels

The lion’s share of energy needs in Yukon is met through hydroelectricity developed in Whitehorse.

But when demand exceeds capacity — a common occurrence during winter months, when electric heating and increased indoor time strain the power grid, or when water levels are low — the grid is supplemented with power from fossil fuels. So energy may be coming from fossil fuels even when homes are heated with electricity or people choose to drive electric cars.

The power grid also remains “islanded,” Streicker said, meaning it is not connected to other, larger networks in Alaska or British Columbia. Additionally, many Yukon communities outside of Whitehorse remain off the main grid, relying on imported, heavily polluting diesel for power.

Read more: How can Canada’s North get off diesel?

Yukon spends about $60 million every year on heating, with $50 million going to fossil fuels imports that are driving up the territory’s greenhouse gas emissions. Heating currently accounts for one-quarter of the territory’s overall emissions and makes up one-half of the Yukon government’s emissions.

So what do each of the three parties propose?

Dixon, from the Yukon Party, said the best solution is to clean up the territory’s backup energy sources.

“The reality of an isolated grid is that fossil fuels will continue to be a part of our grid for the foreseeable future, we’ll always need that backup power, but the goal for us should be to reduce our reliance on that as greatly as possible.”

“Our vision going forward is to add significant renewable energy projects to … the grid,” he said, adding that his party would encourage renewable initiatives for homeowners and small businesses through financial incentives.

“There’s ways to add renewable projects to the grid … whether it’s through the microgeneration policy or the independent power producer policy. Those are both policies that we introduced in our last term in government and ones that our platform will contemplate enhancing and expanding over the course of the next few years,” he said.

The Yukon Party’s platform notes that, if elected, the party will explore the creation of a LNG (liquified natural gas) energy facility in Whitehorse, the development of hydrogen and the option of expanding the Yukon grid to B.C.

The Yukon NDP, meanwhile, would consider expanding the territory’s limited hydro grid. White said Yukon has created a false narrative around diversified energy sources, giving Yukoners the choice between diesel fuel and LNG, without offering large scale renewable projects as an alternative. 

“If we look at our diesel communities, we need to be doing everything we can to support them to cut down on that diesel until we have the ability and enough (renewable) generation to be able to get transmission lines out,” she said. White also noted there are newer and better technologies for renewable power storage and building strategies the territory could exploit to make green power generation more efficient. 

In its platform, the NDP pledges an “out-right ban” on all fracking and “non-renewable energy extraction” in the territory. The party also says it will investigate a territory-wide energy grid, legally mandate energy efficiency in buildings and immediately fund research for thermal heating, geothermal development, small-scale hydro projects, pumped storage, wind, solar and the use of biofuels. 

Read more: Yukon’s climate plans rely on biomass. But is it actually good for the environment?

Streicker said the Liberal Party’s goal is for renewables to generate 97 per cent of the territory’s power and to connect communities not currently on the grid, such as Beaver Creek and Watson Lake. The Liberals support bringing in renewable energy from the Taku River Tlingt’s hydroelectric project near Atlin, B.C., which would involve upgrading transmission lines from Jake’s Corners to Whitehorse or Carcross.

The proposed Moon Lake pumped storage project, which would see renewable energy held in reserve, is “the ideal,” for the Liberals, Streicker added. 

“With respect to reducing our fossil fuels, we absolutely have to shift the energy economy,” Streicker said. The Liberal’s platform also lists commitments to investigate the use of geothermal for both electricity and heat, construct a biomass plant, invest in renewable energy projects in partnership with First Nations and support solar and other micro-energy projects.

A mother fox and her kits out and about in Whitehorse, Yukon, where the species is a now-common sight. As the temperature has risen in the North, red foxes are now able to survive and thrive where they couldn’t before. Photo: Peter Mather

Climate change and Yukon’s biggest emitters

Like much of the North, the Yukon is experiencing the effects of climate change, including thawing permafrost and changes in precipitation, more severely and faster than the rest of the country.

“If you’re asking if we need to reduce our greenhouse emissions or adapt to climate change (in Yukon), it’s not an ‘or’ question, it’s an ‘and’ question,” Streicker said.

Both White and Streicker noted the toll that transportation — cars, trucks, planes — takes on the territory’s emissions and both parties want to “electrify” the Alaska Highway, creating electric vehicle stations so people can use electric cars to move back and forth between communities. Both parties identified transportation as a major issue for the territory in terms of carbon emissions, with Streicker adding that “more than half” the territory’s emissions are generated from transportation alone.

Yukon is a small emitter compared to other provinces, but the territory’s emissions are on the rise. According to the Yukon government’s most recent data, emissions grew by 11.8 per cent between 2009 and 2017, the most recent year for which data is available. Emissions from transportation grew by 14 per cent during the same period.

The Yukon Liberal’s climate plan, Our Clean Future, cited an emissions reduction goal of 30 per cent by 2030. The party’s platform doubles down on the plan, and includes proposed rebates for electric vehicles and bikes and more charging stations. The platform also supports development of climate adaptation, green home building plans, the promotion of sustainable tourism and wildfire prevention.

But White said the Liberal’s climate plan doesn’t go far enough because it doesn’t address emissions from the territory’s mines. Mining is the single-largest private contributor to the territory’s economy.

“I have concerns that the Our Clean Future plan does not include mining in its reduction target and I’m concerned (the target) is too low,” she said. 

The NDP would like the target increased to a 45 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030 and would like to see mining emissions included in the calculations, she said. The NDP platform also pledges to require Yukon mines to meet absolute emissions reductions standards, not intensity targets.”

The Liberal’s Our Climate Plan proposes establishing intensity-based targets for mines in 2022.

Read more: Will mining be the sleeping giant of Yukon greenhouse gas emissions?

According to Roxanne Stasyszyn from Yukon’s Department of Environment, mining emissions make up 10 to 15 per cent of the territory’s total emissions on average, although they fluctuate from year to year depending on the amount of mining activity taking place.

Emissions from mining are calculated based on how much fuel is purchased for mining activities, which is tracked through fuel tax exemption permits and includes fuel used onsite at mines, but not fuel used to transport materials, equipment, or people to and from mine sites. Those activities are captured under other emissions categories such as road transportation and aviation. Mining emissions are tracked separately from other emissions because the variability of the industry makes setting limits for emissions difficult, Stasyszyn told The Narwhal.

Mines connected to the grid, like the Victoria Gold Eagle Gold mine, near Mayo, produce relatively few emissions. However, off-grid mines can be very large emitters if they’re powered by fossil fuels. 

Newmont’s Coffee Gold project, near Dawson City, will use diesel power to produce about 19 million kilowatt hours of energy annually — enough electricity to power about 1,360 Yukon homes for one year. The mine is expected to produce about one million tonnes of carbon dioxide over its 12-year lifespan. The off-grid Kudz Ze Kayah mine is anticipated to produce roughly 110,000 tonnes of emissions over 10 years.

Location of many mining projects, in operation or proposed, in Yukon, including the off-grid Kudz Ze Kayah mine in the southeastern portion of the territory. Map: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Streicker said significant drops in mining sector emissions — which can happen when a mine closes — have been treated in the past by Yukon Party governments as though large climate commitments have been met, which is, in part, why the Liberal Party counts mining emissions separately.

While the Yukon Party is committed to supporting the mining industry, Dixon also noted that  nature is important to “a lot of Yukoners,” saying his party wants to ensure the environment is protected while also balancing economic interests and jobs.

“I want to see a healthy and sustainable mining industry here in the territory, and I want to make sure that we continue to promote the territory as an attractive place to invest in mining opportunities, but also to create opportunities for local citizens,” Dixon said. 

He said the party will be taking “significant action against climate change and ensuring we do our part to address this challenge as part of a Canadian effort and a global effort.”

“We want to see some action taken to address climate change, and we recognize that it’s a significant challenge for all of us.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

The Yukon government is seeking $25 million from Yukon Zinc in bankruptcy proceedings to cover the costs of the company’s shuttered and contaminated Wolverine mine site in southeast Yukon.

Yukon Zinc operated the mine until 2015, when it was temporarily shuttered due to unfavourable market conditions. But the mine never reopened and in 2018 the Yukon government stepped in to handle environmental care and maintenance of the flooded site, which contains waste water contaminated with cadmium, selenium, copper and lead.

Over the course of a three-day hearing in late January, government asked the Yukon Supreme Court to recognize the debt, arguing it has “a provable claim” to $35,548,650 for remediation of the environmental damage at the site and that this claim “ranks above” any other creditor claims against the Wolverine property.

According to court documents, during the course of the mine’s operation Yukon Zinc only paid around one third — $10.6 million — of the $35.5 million security required of it, leaving it owing owing around $25 million earmarked to clean up the mess left behind.

In July 2019, the Yukon government petitioned to have Yukon Zinc sent into receivership so its assets could be liquidated and sold. That request was granted by the Supreme Court of Yukon on Sept.13, with PricewaterhouseCoopers Inc. taking control of proceedings and the mine.

Yukon Zinc — which is owned by Jinduicheng Canada Resources Corp., a private Chinese company — argues that the government can’t claim the $35.5 million security as a debt, because the government hasn’t actually spent any of its own money at the site, only part of the $10.6 million in security Yukon Zinc managed to pay. 

Wolverine mine ‘has left an environmental scar on the territory’

Prior to 2003, remediation of abandoned mine sites was a federal, not territorial, responsibility. 

“This is the first litigation that [the Yukon Government] has initiated … that relates to defaults on the part of a mineral claim/licence holder for a mine,” since the territory took on this responsibility, Laurie Henderson, legal representative for the Yukon government, said in an emailed statement. 

During the final day of the recent hearings, Yukon’s lawyer, John Porter, told the court the Wolverine mine “has left an environmental scar on the territory.”

At the request of his client, Porter declined to comment on the hearing outside of the courtroom.

A request for comment sent to Yukon Zinc via email went unreturned. All phone numbers listed for the company on its website have been disconnected.

Location of the Wolverine mine in Yukon. Map: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

The missing millions

The Wolverine mine site — primarily rich in zinc but with traces of silver, copper, lead and gold — is located in Yukon, approximately halfway between the communities of Watson Lake and Ross River on Kaska First Nation traditional territory.

In the Yukon, mine security increases as sites develop so risk can be assessed over time. In 2006, when Yukon Zinc first opened Wolverine, the company paid an initial deposit of just $1.78 million. 

Operations at Wolverine, which is an underground mine, included construction of a work camp, mill, air strip, tailings storage facility, landfill and a 25-kilometre access road connecting the mine to the Robert Campbell Highway. Commercial production began in 2012 and by 2013 the necessary security increased to $10.6 million, required in scheduled instalments — which Yukon Zinc was consistently late in making.

The company filed for and was granted creditor protection when the mine closed in 2015. Yukon Zinc made its way out of protection in October of that year and brought its total contribution up to the $10.6 million mark, but the mine remained closed.

The Wolverine mine. The underground mine is flooded and its tailings facility has risked overflowing in the years since the mine’s closure in 2015. Photo: Yukon government

In a Yukon Supreme Court document filed July 17, 2019, the Yukon government stated that between 2016 and 2018, inspections found conditions at the site to be rapidly deteriorating. 

The underground mine was flooded, and so contaminated water had to be diverted to the mine’s tailings storage facility, designed to hold waste from mining operations. With no water treatment in place at this time, the water in the tailings pond swelled, and risked overflowing.  

In the same document, the government noted inspection reports issued in 2018 and 2019 identified “serious concerns related to water management and an overall concern about Yukon Zinc’s capacity to undertake the necessary care and maintenance activities at the mine.” 

As a result of “deteriorating environmental conditions at the mine site,” the Yukon government bumped up the required security to $35.5 million in May 2018. By fall the government was forced to step in, beginning environmental maintenance of the site, including the establishment of water treatment.

Selenium a problem in Wolverine tailings

A 2017 government report on the site found that water in the underground mine, even during the period in which there were no mining operations, “exceeds discharge limits for most metal parameters, with exceedances of cadmium, copper, lead, selenium, and zinc.” 

Water samples from the tailings pond registered three different classes of problem contaminants which “require removal to ultra-low levels for discharge,” including cyanide, selenium and metals. 

Moreover, a “significant portion of the total selenium present in the water is selenocyanate and ‘unknown’ organo-selenium species that are not normally present in mine-impacted waters,” the report notes.

Although selenium is an essential nutrient to human health in tiny doses, it can be poisonous at higher levels. Even at low levels, selenium is dangerous to fish, capable of causing crippling deformities.

For decades B.C. failed to address selenium pollution in the Elk Valley. Now no one knows how to stop it.

Both the water in the flooded underground mine and the water in the tailings pond — itself a source of contamination, as it contains the left-overs from the mining process — are contaminated, says Lewis Rifkind, mining analyst for the Yukon Conservation Society. Water from the tailings is presently being treated by a system which allows cleaned water to be pumped out, which was put in place by the Yukon government to prevent it from spilling over and contaminating other water sources.

“The stuff coming out of the site is pretty nasty,” Rifkind told The Narwhal, noting selenium is a large concern at the site. 

Buyer wanted

What the government really wants is a new buyer to return the site to production, John Fox, Yukon government’s assistant deputy minister for oil, gas and mineral resources, told The Narwhal.

With input from government, PricewaterhouseCoopers submitted a sales and marketing plan to the court in January that anticipates the sale of the mine by the end of June. 

The plan relies on an “aggressive timeline,” Fox admitted. 

“With that [sales] plan, we would also expect the successful proponent to provide us with security that … would ultimately link to the new company’s reclamation and closure plan,” Fox said, adding new reclamation and closure plans would be subject to a new environmental assessment.

“We entered into this receivership with our eyes open and we feel there is a very high likelihood that the mine will sell.”

In an affidavit filed Aug. 1, 2019, Fox stated the estimated cost to continue managing contaminated water at the site to the end of the 2020 fiscal year at $6 million. Fox said the $10.6 million in Yukon Zinc security held by government can cover costs until the end of November 2020.

The Yukon government has already directed $5.8 million of the $10.6 million from Yukon Zinc in its possession to pay for the cost of work it has already done at the site to treat and discharge 15,000 cubic metres of water from the facility, Pendergast said, adding more treatment will take place this spring. 

“Future costs will depend on the timing of a potential sale of the property, as well as the need to  address emerging issues as they arise on site,” Natalie Pendergast, communications representative for the Yukon department of Energy, Mines and Resources said.

Yukon Supreme Court Justice Suzanne Duncan, who presided over the January hearing, has reserved her decision on the issues at hand for the time being, although she has stated she recognizes the urgency of the matter, Pendergast said via email. 

Fox said whatever the outcome of the courts, “it’s fair to say that Yukon — unlike [Yukon Zinc] — can’t walk away from those obligations. So we will be spending the money we need to ensure those risks are addressed.”

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Wet tailings and ‘bad rock’

Rifkind said he heard “rumblings” of the possibility of a sale, but thinks it’s “dreaming in technicolour,” as the cost and time to pump out the site, clean it up and make a workable mine again would be undesirable to a buyer. Moreover, the primary product of the mine — zinc, which is primarily used to protect iron and steel from rust — is not a high-roller commodity, he noted.

“Just getting to the site is going to be expensive. It’s got to be remediated and closed up and you need lots of money for that,” Rifkind said. 

Full remediation is expected to cost another $25 million, although Rifkind said he has to wonder if that will be enough, given the kind of barebones upkeep a site like that requires. 

“Keeping the roads open and that sort of stuff, basic maintenance, none of it is cheap — that’s why you burn through money like crazy.”

Rifkind said the fact that the site is water-rich — the underground mine remains flooded and the tailings impoundment is threatening to overflow — is another disincentive for a buyer. 

Wolverine was also built with a wet tailings impoundment, a waste storage technology that fell out of favour after the 2014 Mount Polley mine disaster, which saw the collapse of a tailings dam that released 25 million cubic metres of mine slurry and waste water into the local environment and Quesnel Lake in Likely, B.C. An expert panel report on the disaster recommended best available practices and technology — including dry stack tailings — be used for tailings storage when possible.

“Could you imagine if you bought the mine, put it back into operation, dewatered it and did all the right things, and then tried to get a wet tailings dam through the (environmental assessment process)?” Rifkind said.  

“I mean, the entire Yukon would scream — we just don’t accept wet tailings dams anymore,” Rifkind said. 

“Plus,” he added, “it’s a mine that, when it was operating, was infamous for instability, rock, falls, that sort of thing — it’s something called ‘bad rock,” said Rifkind. “So you need a lot of money just to stabilize the site.”

A rendering of the tailings pond facility at the Wolverine mine. Image: Yukon Zinc

New rules in place

As to why Yukon Zinc was allowed to operate for so long without providing the full required security deposit, Pendergast said via email that for the government to take enforcement action the mine operator had to be in non-compliance of the terms and conditions of its licence, but during most of the temporary closure, Yukon Zinc was in compliance.

“In the end, Yukon Zinc Corporation’s failure to comply with the terms and conditions of its licence increased the closure costs of the mine,” Pendergast added, noting that the government is looking at the options in its toolbox when it comes to reconsidering the terms and conditions of licences to be more proactive in addressing the risk of mines. 

Some of those tools have already been put in place.

Shortly after the security for Wolverine was set at $10.6 million in 2013, the government changed its rules to require security for any critical infrastructure that has to be constructed for the mine during its entire lifecycle, according to Fox.

“Yukon Zinc required a water treatment plant on site. Our old rules basically said, ‘if they don’t need the water treatment system right now, they don’t need to secure it. We will get that (money) when they will build it later and everything will be fine,’ ” Fox said. “Of course they didn’t build it and everything wasn’t fine.” 

This policy in and of itself is a “change” and the government believes it will go a long way to preventing a recurrence of a situation like Wolverine again, he said. 

“The Wolverine is the first mine in the Yukon since devolution where a company has failed to pay the required security,” Fox noted. 

In November of last year, the Yukon government announced it was considering the creation of a reclamation fund, but hasn’t said yet who will be responsible for paying into it.

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In the beginning, freshly hatched from the luminous prison of their eggs, the Chinook appear in the river as minnow-sized fingerlings, barely recognizable as fish. Ravenous with the needs of their rapidly growing bodies, they eat insects, phytoplankton, nymphs: anything that will fit into their mouths. 

Should these thumb-sized gluttons manage to avoid becoming an hors d’oeuvre for a legion of would-be predators — gulls, pike, trout, kingfishers — the fry will eventually make their way some 3,000 kilometres down the Yukon River to the Bering Sea. 

Once there, they will enter the salt water, spending between four and six years in the ocean and growing to a tremendous size. The largest and most reproductive fish can push 14 kilograms, although much larger fish have been recorded. 

Then they return to the river, fighting their way to the streams where they hatched, eating nothing during their migration, relying entirely on the fat and muscle reserves of their own bodies as their sex organs enlarge and their stomachs shrink.

A female Chinook salmon in the fast-flowing waters of its spawning stream. Photo: Peter Mather

The Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) of the Yukon River make one of the longest salmon migrations in the world — and, arguably, one of the most politically and socially complex. 

A staple food and cultural touchstone for First Nations living along the Yukon River, Canadian-origin salmon are born in the Yukon, spend their adult lives in the Alaskan and international waters of the ocean, traversing thousands of kilometres to breed. They are managed jointly by the U.S. and Canada under the Yukon River Salmon Agreement, which is part of the Pacific Salmon Treaty. 

This year, Chinook returns in the Yukon, particularly those at the Whitehorse fish ladder, came in far below expected numbers (although the run was stronger than average in Old Crow). Returns at the Whitehorse fish ladder were at their lowest since 1977 with only 282 fish counted, compared with 690 last year. 

According to Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans, treaty-obligated escapements — the number of fish that make it back over the Alaskan border into the Yukon to breed — were “not achieved in five of the past 11 years,” though the trend has been positive in recent years — at least until now.

(For more details on escapement numbers over the years, see this document from the Yukon River Joint Technical Committee.)

A child connects with a Chinook salmon as it makes its way through the fish ladder in Whitehorse, Yukon. The ladder, built in 1958, is the longest fish ladder in the world and enables the salmon to swim up and over the Whitehorse hydroelectric dam. Photo: Peter Mather

There are serious economic and cultural impacts of this decline for communities along the river, especially Yukon First Nations, who have been hardest hit. 

Many Yukon First Nations, including the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in of Dawson — the site of a short-lived commercial fish processing plant, Han Fisheries, which closed in 1997 — have voluntarily either decreased their traditional harvest or given it up entirely in order to help the Chinook recover. 

This has created tension and resentment among many Canadian and First Nation fisher folk towards their Alaskan counterparts, who take a much bigger share of the fish. 

Along with the drop in numbers, the survival rate of offspring is falling. Only one to two fish are returning per successful mating, just enough to keep the population at its current level, but not increase numbers.

There has also been a marked decline in the size of returning fish. Larger, older fish, especially females, are more productive. They lay more eggs, set them into their redds more effectively and create better survival outcomes for their offspring than smaller, younger fish. 

Yukon River Chinook salmon alevins at the fish hatchery in Whitehorse. Roughly 10,000 fish are released near Whitehorse each year. Photo: Peter Mather

‘They overfished everything’

Tommy Taylor keeps track of his days on the river with a Coca Cola wall calendar. Each day he goes out fishing, he notes down the details of his catch — how many, what species, what sex — in firm, neat script, square by square. Sitting at his kitchen table, Taylor points out his best excursions. 

“Yeah, I started fishing here,” he says, pointing to July 4. His finger moves across the blocks of the calendar, head turned to the side, reading his own writing. “That’s it, that’s one male king there. Then three the next day … I think my best day is like, maybe 10 or 11 fish … I only fish for the month of July, then I shut it down for August.” 

Taylor has lived by and on the Yukon River for nearly 60 years; he once fished professionally, as did his father before him, before the closure of Han Fisheries.

Now he runs Fish Wheel Charters, a company hosting scenic boat tours of the Yukon River. His fish wheel — a device that uses the power of the river to catch and deposit salmon into a well for later processing — is a sight-seeing attraction.

Gwich’in elder James Itsi dries chum salmon in his smoke shack in Old Crow, Yukon. Photo: Peter Mather

“In the past, fishing was a good source of food and income that we used to make a living, but the size then, they were bigger. The biggest salmon I’ve ever seen come out of that river was caught on a fish wheel and weighed 94 pounds … and the biggest one I‘ve ever seen come out of my father’s fish wheel was 72 pounds,” Taylor says.

“But that’s over now. Over. In the last ten years, the Chinook salmon, the numbers have been down, and also the size of the salmon — nothing bigger than 15 pounds.” 

“Yeah,” he says, leaning back in his chair, hands flat on the table before him. “That’s all over now.”

Although he still holds a commercial licence, Taylor doesn’t “fish seriously” any more, either for Chinook or chum, he says. He takes just a few fish for himself and, if he gets a female in his fish wheel and he gets there in time, he puts her carefully back in the water. 

“When we had the fish plant open here, in the ’80s … they caught a lot of big salmon,” says Taylor. “They overfished everything. Even a year [of overfishing] affects the salmon.”

For many First Nation people — including Taylor’s nation, the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in — fishing for Chinook salmon at all is a weighty and emotional issue. The restrictions on fishing for the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in are voluntary, the result of an ask by the nation’s general assembly in 2013 to take pressure off the fish and help them recover.

Map: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

The ban, which isn’t set to expire until 2021, has serious cultural impacts for the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in. This year, at their annual fish camp — a cultural on-the-land teaching camp designed to pass on traditional skills to Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in youth — they used frozen chum instead of fresh-caught Chinook. 

“When I came here in the early ’90s it was like a total fishing village,” says Natasha Ayoub, fish and wildlife manager for the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation. “There were boats coming in and out, there were fish camps up and down the river.” 

“Fishing was a huge part of Dawson City.” 

All those camps are gone now, she says. 

Ayoub says she feels like the ban was “fully necessary.”

“People were still fully engrained in fishing,” she says. “We needed to take a step back and evaluate, to you know, look at the harvest on this side of the border, and the TH [Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in] took the lead in that.” 

Even though the ban is voluntary, Ayoub says it’s still a “very rigid resolution.” 

“The whole request to withdraw from your traditional harvest is sort of a rigid umbrella especially when you recognize that there are going to be good years and bad years [in the fish cycle]. There’s also a whole bunch of cultural implications, you know, cultural loss and generational disconnect.”

Aerial photography of Dawson City, home of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, along the Yukon River. Photo: Peter Mather

‘Conservation fatigue’ and cross-border tensions

In Eagle, Alaska — the final count point for Alaskans, with a population of 83 people — about 800 fish have been harvested on average since 2013.

That’s more fish than are harvested by the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, which take only an estimated 200 fish, Ayoub says. The average harvest for the entirety of the Yukon for the last five years is about 2400.

The discrepancy is hard on morale, she notes. 

“For the first three or four years, there was a great uptake [on the fishing ban],” Ayoub says. 

“But this is the other thing, because of the border, [because] of the politics … For a number of years [before the ban] there were a lot of [Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in] citizens choosing not to fish … but now [First Nation people] are looking around and saying ‘hey, there’s no leeway here, and the Alaskans had a great summer’ … now people are suffering from what I like to call ‘conservation fatigue.’ ”

Ayoub points out, however, that the solution is not as simple as Alaskan communities cutting back on how many fish they take — many would say they are already cutting back, a little bit at a time — because there simply isn’t any other industry in those communities.

Fisheries biologist Nicholas de Graff weighs and measures a spawning Chinook salmon before releasing it back into its spawning stream. Nicholas’ work includes gathering eggs and milt to raise hatchery salmon with the Carmacks Salmon First Nation at the local school in Carmacks. Photo: Peter Mather

If the fish don’t come, not only do people lack salmon to eat but they don’t have any other source of income. The salmon fishery, both for chum and for Chinook, is integral to the survival of some Alaskan communities.

Although Ayoub says the voluntary fishing ban on Chinook has been well received, Ali Anderson, fish and wildlife stewart for the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, says it’s not quite that cut and dried. Lots of people aren’t happy about it, including Anderson himself. He misses the fish camps, and would like to see more kids out there and more folks fishing for the elders, whom he says miss the Chinook the most. 

“I’d like to see more [Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in] people out on the river, fishing for themselves,” he says. “You don’t have to get crazy about it — just enough for themselves and their families … Fishing for me is just a way of life.”

“Everyone is complaining — all the older people are complaining … I mean, they get a couple salmon, that will last them, but I don’t think they got hardly any this year.”

“If you live on the river,” he adds, “that’s what you want to do — you want to go fishing. I’d like to see more of that, but it can’t be helped. We’ve got to try our best to help nature.” 

Taylor, whose warm, tidy home is full of fishing knicknacks, says a number of issues are impacting the salmon: water temperatures are higher and levels are lower, winter ice is thinner and the flow of the river is changing. 

Does he think the Yukon Chinook can be saved? 

He leans back in his chair with his hands on the table in front of him and sighs. 

“That depends,” he says carefully, “on the Americans.”

American overfishing is the biggest problem, he says.

“Why come talk to us about how many fish we take?” Taylor asks, “I mean, it’s good to take down numbers, but go talk to these American people that are taking the majority of the fish.”

Salmon are still caught using the traditional salmon gaffs by First Nations people in many locations throughout the Yukon. Photo: Peter Mather

Alaskan management a ‘failure’ in 2019

That sentiment is echoed beyond the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in community. 

Sebastian Jones, fish and wildlife analyst for the Yukon Conservation Society, says one of the troubling things about dealing with Alaskan conservation policy is the way the U.S. constitution handles resource management. Jones is a West Dawsonite, one of the hardy off-grid folks who live on the other side of the river in Dawson. He still fishes for chum salmon for subsistence, mainly as food for his dogs.

Vicky Josie checks her salmon net along the Porcupine River, one of the main tributaries of the Yukon River system that sees Chinook and chum salmon runs. The Gwich’in First Nations people along the river have long relied on the salmon. Chinook are prized for their oily flesh and chum salmon have traditionally been used to feed dog teams. Photo: Peter Mather

Essentially, the Alaskan constitution guarantees that resources such as salmon be handled in such a way as to allow as much harvest as possible for the Alaskan people, so the Americans view anything over the agreed upon escapement values as “a waste,” Jones says. 

“Unfortunately, I think the only thing that’s going to cause a shift [in American policy] is a complete collapse,” says David Curtis, a long-time West Dawsonite, fisher, and friend of Jones. Curtis says the treaty agreements regarding the fish between Canada and the U.S. has not been well implemented. 

“I think one of the biggest challenges is that the treaty is in place and there is a lack of implementation due to, maybe, a lack of teeth by DFO [Fisheries and Oceans Canada].” 

“These fish cannot be saved without the Alaskan side completely shifting their management.” 

“It’s only been the last, oh, 10 years or so that [the Alaskans] have really even begun to consider, let alone implement, restrictions because they’re so scared of going against the ethos of liberty and rugged individualism and ‘take what you want.’ That’s a cultural thing that can’t really be addressed.”

Paul Josie dries chum salmon at his camp along the Porcupine River, a tributary of the Yukon River. Chum are traditionally used to feed sled dogs. Photo: Peter Mather

At the most recent Yukon River Panel — a body split between Canada and the U.S. representing interests on both sides of the border — held Dec. 9 in Whitehorse, Alaskan Department of Fish and Game told Canadian representatives they believed Alaskans had harvested about 20,000 to 25,000 Canadian-origin fish.

“We have these conversations from year to year and nothing seems to be getting better and people aren’t satisfied. More and more there are deeply rooted frustrations,” Canadian panel member James MacDonald told Holly Carroll of the Alaskan Department of Fish and Game during the meeting. 

“You [Alaskans] caught more in your commercial incidental catch than we caught [in the Yukon] all season and that is a deep source of frustration for a lot of people,” he said. 

“I feel your concerns and I understand your frustration,” Carroll replied. “As an area management biologist, I am frustrated with the results of this season … we thought we had fish to harvest, we harvested some fish and then not enough arrived at the border. It is always the goal of [the Alaskan Department of Fish and Game] to meet its management objectives.” 

“I am not proud of the management performance this year — it is a failure,” Carroll added.

“I’m sorry for the frustrations that everyone feels and we are going to work on it.” 

Forrest Bowers, area management biologist for the Alaskan Department of Fish and Game, says Canadians have many misconceptions about Alaska’s management of Yukon River Chinook. One misconception is that fish are managed for “maximum” yield for Alaskans, he says.

In fact, the Alaskan constitution does not guarantee a maximum harvest, but a harvest in keeping with “sustained yield principles” designed for “the maximum benefit of the Alaskan people,” Bowers points out.

“Certainly, the farther up the river I go, the more pessimistic people are [about the runs],” he says.

The braided channels of the Yukon River serve as important spawning habitat for both Chinook and chum salmon. Photo: Peter Mather

Some Alaskans also speculate that Canadian mining operations in the Yukon are taking a toll on Chinook populations on their side of the border, although in what way is unknown, he notes. 

“The population isn’t producing the numbers it has in the past, but it isn’t, you know, threatened,” Bowers says. “We had 219,000 Chinook come through Pilot station this year. You know, that’s a good number of fish, in my opinion.” 

What happens to all those fish once they are counted at the Pilot station, however, is difficult to determine. There are hundreds of kilometres of river with countless tributaries. 

“It’s a balancing act for us to provide fishing opportunity for everyone along the river,” he says. 

“You know the flip side of that is that if you are too conservative with a lower river you would maybe have forgone harvest opportunity there and maybe exceed escapement goals in the upper river.” 

“There’s two sides to that coin and that’s the challenge in fishery management, is to balance those tradeoffs.”

Fostering understanding about the decline of Chinook

Stephanie Quinn-Davidson, executive director of the Alaska-based Yukon River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission says there are misconceptions about what is causing the decline in Chinook stocks — and how those stocks are managed — on both sides of the border. 

Created in 2014, the commission works to create a unified voice for Yukon River Alaskan Natives to manage and restore the salmon. Quinn-Davison, who used to work for the Alaskan Department of Fish and Game, is not Alaskan Native, but describes herself as “Lower 48 Native.”

The sheer distance between communities plays a part in fostering misconceptions and blame, and is “a huge problem,” Quinn-Davidson says. The resentment from Yukon First Nations towards Alaska — and the perception that many Alaska Native communities take more than their fair share — is mirrored all along the river on the Alaska side, with people farther up river blaming people down river for the same kind of behaviour.

“Everyone starts pointing fingers, everyone wants to find a culprit for why the numbers are lower than what we expect,” she says.

It used to be the communities all along the river could all harvest as much as they needed, she says, but there also used to be fewer people and more fish — numbers now are about half of what they used to be — and so the idea that everyone can take as much as they used needs to be revisited. 

Size is also a factor, she says.

“You know, a 30-pound salmon, maybe a family only has to catch 10 of those [to feed itself],” Quinn-Davidson says. “But now the salmon are 10 or 12 pounds and you need to catch more, three times as many.”

Chinook salmon weighing 85 pounds caught in Dawson. Salmon this size are not seen in the Yukon any longer. Photo: Courtesy of the Claude and Mary Tidd fonds collection / Yukon Archives

Three-tiered drying rack with thousands of salmon near the Forty Mile River. Photo: Courtesy of the Claude and Mary Tidd fonds collection / Yukon Archives

Bringing in breakfast in the Pelly River area. This catch represents more than 120 pounds of salmon. Photo: Courtesy of the Claude and Mary Tidd fonds collection / Yukon Archives

Part of the goal of the inter-tribal fish commission is to foster understanding between Yukon First Nations and Alaskan Natives along the Yukon River, she says, and towards this end the group alternates meetings between Anchorage and Whitehorse, often bringing people back and forth to meet their distant river-neighbours — although this is wildly expensive, she notes, adding it cost $30,000 to get eight people to the most recent meeting in Whitehorse, which took place Dec. 7. To that end, though, it helps because then people can meet and share and understand what the other is experiencing. 

“So now, maybe next summer, instead of harvesting 60 fish, a [Alaska Native] will say, ‘Oh, but I heard Madeline from Teslin tell me about how she hasn’t fished in 15 years and she’s made that choice because she wants to ensure there are enough Chinook for future generations, so maybe this year, I’ll just target 25 [fish],’ ” Quinn-Davidson says. 

“You know, on the other side Yukon First Nations hear the stories of our [Alaska Native] fishermen living out in rural Alaska with no job, no economy, no way to purchase groceries at the store. The river and the land is their grocery store. In order to feed their families during the winter, they need to harvest 200 fish because they have their grandparents, aunts and uncles and kids, they’re feeding 15 people in their family,” she says. 

“It’s by making those personal connections … and understanding the sacrifices that everyone is making on both sides of the world that we’re going to be able to actually conserve the Chinook. If people don’t have that broader understanding, it’s always going to be the mentality of ‘you know, I’m only looking out for myself,’ … and we need people to have that bigger, broader perspective in order to do conservation.”

A member of the Selkirk First Nation checks his net on the Pelly River. Photo: Peter Mather

First Nations and Alaska Natives both want the same thing in the end, she adds — to protect the salmon. 

As for the way the fish are managed governmentally, things are more complex than they appear, and ideas about how to best conserve the fish may not line up with government policies about how best to harvest the fish. 

“To put it bluntly [in Alaska] the fishery is managed under the commercial fisheries department … And commercial fisheries is about maximizing harvest for the economic benefit of the users. That doesn’t fit within a subsistence framework, right? That doesn’t fit in with a First Nations framework,” she says. 

“In a commercial fishery, forgone harvest is a very bad thing — that’s money, right down the drain. That’s the mentality of that department.” 

Despite their differing viewpoints, Quinn-Davidson is optimistic and has a great deal of respect for the Alaskan Department of Fish and Game, she says, where there are “lots of good people working” and trying to do their best, she adds. 

Changing climate, changing food availability

Overfishing and mismanagement — on either side of the border — may not be the only culprits in the decline, however.

For his part, Bowers says he suspects the decline on the Yukon side may be because a changing climate is altering the timing of food availability for young fish. 

Regardless, it’s a “false assumption that having more spawners will produce more returns,” he says. 

“In the case of most depressed salmon stocks, such as Chinook, we believe that early marine survival is really the limiting factor and producing more juvenile salmon that are just going to die when they get into the ocean is not really the solution. You’re going to forgo harvest opportunity to put those extra fish onto the spawning grounds and they’re not going to result in increased returns.” 

Elizabeth MacDonald, executive director of the Yukon River salmon sub-committee, says the first step is to determine how many Chinook are out there, noting that it’s a fraught and complicated job to figure out exactly how many salmon are coming up the river and how many are spawning. 

When the fish start entering the river from the sea, they are initially counted at Pilot, Alaska, using sonar. This system, says MacDonald, is “more of an estimate than a count.” It’s a bit like estimating the number of jelly beans in a jar — you take a snapshot, count up the beans in a set area, estimate the amount of space and make an educated guess.

Chinook salmon fry being released into Wolf Creek near Whitehorse. The fry are being used to help recover the devastated salmon stocks of the Yukon River system. Photo: Peter Mather

From there, the fish swim through through tributaries, branching off into other natal rivers to spawn on the American side. The Canadian-born salmon keep going to about 100 spawn sites on Canada’s side of the Yukon River, says MacDonald. 

The Yukon River Salmon Agreement sets the number of Chinook that must leave Alaska and reach their spawning grounds back in Canada at 42,500 to 55,000 fish, which is referred to as an escapement goal. These fish are counted at Eagle, Alaska, which provides much more definitive numbers than the Pilot count, according to MacDonald.

What gets reported as official spawning escapement numbers are the amount of fish that make it back past the border and are not harvested on the Canadian side.

Canada sets its fishing quotas based on the Eagle numbers, but the Alaskans set their fishing quotas based on the Pilot numbers; if they waited for the salmon to get upstream to Eagle, the Chinook would already be long gone. 

If the estimates are off or something happens to the fish along the way — the Alaskans are entitled to 75 per cent of the entire run beyond escapement — then they can end up taking more than they are technically entitled to, which “often happens,” MacDonald says. 

This also means the Canadian side can peg fishing on escapement numbers, because the escapement quota might be all the fish coming.

When that happens — as it often does — the Chinook fishery is usually only open to First Nations subsistence, who usually favour caring for the future of the fish and take “very conservative quotas,” MacDonald says, noting they usually take only one-quarter or one-third of the catch to which they are entitled. 

Even when escapement goals are met, however, there is no way to determine how many Chinook are making it to their natal streams and spawning successfully.

The missing 40,000

Somewhere between Pilot and Eagle, tens of thousands of Chinook went missing this year.

“We’re actually missing about 40,000 fish,” MacDonald says. 

To put that into perspective, that’s one fish for every single person living in the Yukon. 

Sometimes, the estimates made in Pilot can be complicated by runs of chum salmon which often begin at around the same time. This year, however, says MacDonald, the runs began late so the Chinook counts at the Pilot station can be considered to be more accurate than usual. 

She finds that disturbing because the missing fish likely can’t be dismissed as a miscount, but could be a pre-spawn die off.

“This is an indication that something is definitely going on,” says MacDonald. 

A pre-spawn die off occurs when a large number of salmon die before they reach their spawning ground, sometimes as the result of human interference, as in the case of hundreds of pink salmon on the Cheakamus River near Squamish this year. 

At other times, conditions fish cannot handle — such as disease, increased temperatures or other inclement environmental factors — either kill fish en masse or deplete their reserves to the point where they don’t have the strength to make it to the spawning grounds.

Elders and youth around the campfire at the Nacho Nyak Dun fish camp along the Stewart River in 2014. Community members teach the youth to process and cook alternative fish sources like chum salmon and whitefish, because the First Nation passed a resolution to voluntarily stop the Chinook salmon fishery. Photo: Peter Mather

Temperature is ‘the master factor’ for fish populations

Climate and climate change play an important role in these die offs, according to University of British Columbia forestry professor Scott Hinch, who specializes in salmon survival, migration and conservation. 

Temperature is “the master factor” when it comes to fish populations, Hinch says, driving everything from metabolic processes to disease resistance and progress to when to migrate and mate. When the temperature changes, the salmon’s physiology and behaviour change, and there’s a limit to how much change a salmon can tolerate. 

Both Alaska and the Yukon had unprecedented heatwaves this past summer, with water temperatures reaching record highs in some rivers. 

How increased water temperatures affect fish is a multifaceted issued, Hinch says. When the water temperature rises above a certain point, salmon cannot efficiently extract enough oxygen. 

They can go into an “oxygen debt” which may send them into cooler waters — provided those waters exist — for a short period of time. This is not dissimilar to red-lining an overheated engine; you can push it to the next gas station, but do it too long and your car is toast.

This year, water temperatures in the Yukon River reached 18 degrees.

Carroll says the high temperatures caused the death of thousands of chum salmon in Alaska this past year.

“The chum are in a system with shallow water so we saw their bodies floating and washed up on sand bars,” she says. “But you don’t hear about that in Canada because a lot of chum don’t make it back across the border.”

She says that while the same wasn’t witnessed with Chinook, which could have been less visible if they died in deeper water, there is reason to be concerned about heat-stress for the species.

Even if the salmon make it to cooler water, they’ve used up precious energy reserves and may not have strength left to make it to the spawning ground, especially if they encounter hot conditions again and again. For salmon like the Yukon River Chinook, whose migration is especially long, this energy expenditure can mean the difference between making it to the spawning ground or dying before they can breed. 

Increased water temperature has the additional effect of increasing pathogen activity in the water. The salmon are already immunosuppressed, Hinch says — this is among the suspected reasons why Pacific salmon species die after spawning — and an increased pathogen load means fish are more stressed and may not have the resources to make it to the spawning grounds. 

It’s possible for the salmon to adapt to higher water temperatures over time but “how quickly natural selection can do that is the question,” Hinch says. 

With so much working against them, can the Yukon River Chinook rebound?

That depends on whom you ask. 

Anderson says he thinks the Chinook can recover — as long as people take just what they need, not like “the big trawlers in Alaska — but it will take time.”

Taylor, for his part, says he thinks “the fish are slowly coming back,” although not at the same sizes or numbers as before. The females he’s been seeing recently are some of the largest fish he’s caught, which he says is unusual. 

“Before this summer, I never would have thought the fish were doomed,” Ayoub says.

Salmon culture along the Pelly River with the Selkirk First Nation. Traditional first nations people, restricting themselves to 30 salmon a family to help the salmon stocks recover to traditional levels. Photo: Peter Mather

“I would have thought our management efforts could have rebounded them, but this summer –— and this is absolutely staggering — the entire length of the Yukon River had an average of four and a half degrees centigrade warmer temperature than average and the average has been going up for years … When I saw that, I thought, ‘Oh, the fish are doomed … .’ They can’t survive that.”

“Am I optimistic?” Jones says. “No, I’d have to be on drugs to be optimistic.” 

“The only thing we can control is our own behaviour.” 

“I think that salmon are incredibly resilient creatures,” says Quinn-Davidson. 

“And if you give them half the chance, they will rebound. We have seen salmon, repopulate areas that have been damaged by mining damaged by natural disasters and, you know, areas in the lower 48 where they’re taking dams out, and now salmon are running up those rivers.”

“You just gotta give them half a chance.”

Update December 20, 2019, 1:24 p.m. PST: This article was updated to clarify Chinook escapement goals and that these goals have been unmet on the Canadian side of the border in five of the last 11 years, not five of the last seven years as previously stated. This article was also updated to correct the fact that Chinook harvest in Eagle, Alaska, is on average 800 fish per year between 2013 and 2018 and not 3,000 as previously reported. Additions have been made to qualify the danger higher water temperatures pose to Chinook salmon and to note the death of thousands of chum salmon from heat-induced stress in Alaska this year. This story previously reported that 22 degree temperature waters is lethal to salmon, but on the advice of experts, who say further research is needed to identify lethal thresholds, we have removed this reference.

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