Canadians eye U.S. lands for trainloads of free gold from cyanide-based Kilgore Project

“When people or countries come in to raid the great wealth of our Nation, I want them to pay for the privilege of doing so.” 

President Donald Trump, December 4, 2018
 
“We must not allow corporations to pillage our public lands and leave taxpayers to clean up the mess.” 

Elizabeth Warren
U.S. Senator (D-Mass.) and presidential candidate,
April 15, 2019


We agree -- especially when the raider is a foreign gold-mining company.

Yet President Trump and the U.S. Congress are exempting Canada's Otis Gold Corporation from this pronouncement. So this mining company -- and others like it -- is indeed hoping to extract American wealth from America's wildlands without paying a penny in royalties to the American treasury.

And they hope to do so in a part of Idaho where few will notice ... until the train has left the station.


Caribou-Targhee National Forest's Dubois Ranger District has approved a plan under which Otis Gold can begin a multi-year exploratory phase. The work would include road building for up to 140 drill sites in an area about five air miles northwest of the remote village of Kilgore, in Clark County, Idaho's least populated county.

Larger than the state of Rhode Island, but with only about 900 residents, Clark County extends to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, a vast wildland rich in migratory wildlife, ranching and recreational opportunities.

As for President Trump's pronouncement ... The huge cyanide-based open-pit mine the Canadians envision could, they say, yield at least 825,000 ounces of American gold.

Yet, under a U.S. law passed four years before Custer's Last Stand, Otis Gold would be exempt from any obligation to pay royalties to the American people for raiding "the great wealth of our Nation."

Let Trump, your members of Congress and @CaribouTargheeNationalForest know what you think.