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The Taku is a “Most Endangered River” in 2011
Will Patric : Apr 19.2011The Taku is once again on British Columbia’s “Most Endangered Rivers List” for 2011. The list, released by the Outdoor Recreation Council on April 18th, placed the transboundary Taku at number seven, citing mining related concerns threatening its exceptional natural values.
That the Taku remains on the list is particularly unfortunate in light of the Land Use Plan now being finalized between British Columbia and the Taku River Tlingit First Nation. Covering the northwest corner of the province, the Plan embraces all the Canadian portion of the Taku watershed. According to the provincial government, it will provide for “world class salmon management,” and indeed it does protect the main stem Taku (to the Alaska border) and the Taku’s Nakina and Inklin tributaries, representing a significant conservation gain. But the Plan also sanctions a mining district in the Tulsequah Valley, where the Tulsequah River joins the Taku just before crossing into Alaska. From an environmental perspective, this would be a terrible location for such development.
Small scale mining occurred in the Tulsequah Valley into the 1950s. Two abandoned mine sites have been bleeding acid and toxic metals into the Tulsequah River ever since. Fortunately the pollution is not sufficient to cause major impacts, but it’s a vivid warning that the sulfide geology of the area, if disturbed by mining, will generate acid. A bigger mine, or mines, would be bound to produce more acid. Add an abundance of rain and snow to the mix, frequent flooding, avalanches, plus seismic activity at this remote locale, and all the makings of a serious environmental problem are there. With a tailings impoundment failure, for example, the consequences could be catastrophic. The Taku’s best salmon habitat, a maze of winding streams and backwaters vital to rearing juvenile salmon, is immediately downstream of Tulsequah. And virtually all of some two million salmon leaving or returning to the Taku system annually must pass by Tulsequah.
In sum, mining at Tulsequah would undermine conservation gains of the Land Use Plan. That threat is the reason the Taku, one of North America’s premier wild salmon systems, is also one of British Columbia’s most endangered rivers.