Canadian firm pitches risky cyanide mining process, snubs Greater Yellowstone wildlife

Grizzly bear warning near Kilgore Project site.

As generations of hunters, campers, ranchers, wildland travelers and Continental Divide hikers can attest, the Centennial Mountains between Idaho and Montana are still some of the wildest country along the border between the two Rocky Mountain states.

Yet it is here, on the Idaho side where this photo was taken, that a foreign gold-mining company hopes to cash in on America's policy of giving away its natural wealth without requiring royalty payments to the American people.


At the least, the Centennial Mountains are important as a corridor for wildlife movement -- including grizzly bears -- between the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and the rest of the northern Rockies. (Idaho Conservation League Public Lands Director John Robison explains more here.)

Kilgore Project area

But worse in some minds is that, even with the U.S. federal deficit nearing $1 trillion, many American politicians say we don't deserve a bite of our own pie. Canada's Otis Gold Corp. can have it all.

So in 2019, the Idaho side of the Centennials (in Clark County) will be the focus of exploratory road building and drilling by Otis Gold.

Eager to exploit possible low-grade gold reserves under a U.S. law passed when Ulysses S. Grant was president, Otis Gold (www.otisgold.com) is soliciting investors for a proposed open-pit mine it envisions for Caribou-Targhee National Forest.

Fortunately, it is early in Otis Gold's exploratory phase. The mine it envisions -- a 12,150-acre cyanide heap-leach operation of the sort Montana banned 20 years ago -- is far from commencing, if it's ever proposed and approved under the U.S. General Mining Act of 1872.

Agree or not, let Caribou-Targhee National Forest in nearby Idaho Falls, and U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo and Rep. Mike Simpson (both of Idaho Falls) know what you think.