The Fickle Business of the Open Pit: 1937 – 2008

1937: Blue Ledge Company sets up underground adits, potential prospect pits, a tramway, and a foundation for a mill that will never end up getting built.

1983 – 1994: Bear Creek Mining tries some exploratory drilling then sells to Placer Dome US (1990), which after trying some exploratory drilling sells to Pegasus. In all, these companies drill 39,360′ through 69 holes.

1994 – 1996: Pegasus sells to Echo Bay Mines, which drills 82,897′, exploring 122 holes. Echo Bay Mines creates a plan for an open-pit mine, but luckily the plan never pans out due to low gold prices.

1998: Latitude Minerals strikes a 49%-51% joint agreement with Echo Bay Mines on September 2. Latitude drills six holes into Dog Bone Ridge.

2002 – 2008: Kilgore Minerals, which is later acquired by Bayswater Uranium Corp., expands the property to 3,000 acres and tries a diamond drill program of six holes, then sells to Otis Gold.

Otis Gold’s Open-Pit Cyanide Heap Leach Mine Dream for the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem: 2008-2019

2008 – 2016: Even though eight companies explore then abandon the Kilgore Project, Otis Gold aggressively tries to convince potential share-buyers to invest in their flagship project in Idaho.

Here is a video of President and CEO of the company, Craig Lindsay, saying that his goal of scraping an open-pit cyanide heap leach mine out of the slopes of the Centennial Mountains will have no material impediments in order to secure a permit.

Their now-nonexistent website included a statement saying that “[n]o environmental liabilities are currently known to exist.” To read about several of the environmental liabilities that are known to exist, check out this and this.

2016: Otis Gold increases its land position by 116%.

2018: Otis Gold submits for Forest Service approval an increase in their land position by 33%, an additional 3,000 acres. The Canadian gold company becomes the “second largest land position prospective for gold in the state of Idaho,” with four other projects beside the Kilgore site.

Jan. 10, 2018: The Dubois Ranger District publishes a legal notice, inviting the public to comment within thirty days.

Jan. 31, 2018: The Post Register runs an article letting the public know that they can comment by Feb. 9, though the article offers no instructions on how to do so.

Feb. 1, 2018: We at ScholarDay publish a detailed post about the project and how to offer public comment, campaigning against the expansion (#killthekilgore, #killthekilgoreproject). Please disregard the form letter. This advice has since become outdated as we’ve learned how to more successfully offer comments.

Feb. 6, 2018: The Idaho Conservation League publishes a detailed article about the project and how to offer public comment.

Feb. 9, 2018: The thirty day comment period closes and the Forest Service begins an environmental assessment using the concerns raised by the public. Thank you to everyone who wrote to the Forest Service!

Feb. 11, 2018: We at ScholarDay publish a follow-up post going into more detail about the Kilgore Project and the area that would be affected by Otis’s expansion and goal of an open-pit cyanide heap leach mine.

August 20, 2018 – September 9, 2019: The Forest Service approves Otis Gold’s land and drill expansion.

October 12, 2019: Otis Gold commences drilling and road construction. They build 10 drill sites, complete 11 drill holes, and construct 1,876 feet of new roads before a federal court orders them to stop.

December 18, 2019: The Idaho Conservation League and the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, represented by Advocates for the West, sue the U.S. Forest Service. Federal Judge B. Lynn Winmill rules that the Forest Service acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” in their quick approval of the Kilgore Project.

Otis Gold Sells Its Open-Pit Cyanide Heap Leach Mine Dream to Excellon Resources, an even scarier figure for the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem: 2020-Present

February 24, 2020: Excellon Resources buys 100% of Otis Gold and Otis Gold’s plan to build an open-pit cyanide heap leach mine at the Kilgore Project area. Since they have significantly more resources, they intend to expand even more aggressively than Otis Gold.

Here’s their Ben Pullinger saying “Our initial field season has confirmed our belief in the multiple growth opportunities on the Kilgore Property, both within and beyond the known mineral resource.”

And here they using a 2019 assessment “that supports the potential for a low capital intensity, low operating cost, open-pit, heap-leach mining operation.”

On that same page, in fact in the following two sentences, they continue:

“Multiple opportunities exist to enhance the project, including significant exploration potential.”

“The Kilgore project is scalable in size and throughput and is open for expansion to the north, south and west.”

May 4, 2020: The U.S. District Court upholds Judge Winmill’s ruling. Since the Forest Service didn’t consider the impact of the expansion proposal on downstream Yellowstone cutthroat trout, Judge Winmill revokes the Forest Service’s approval and requires a new environmental assessment.

July 22, 2020: Excellon Resources, under their newly acquired subsidiary’s name (Otis Gold), resubmits the expansion proposal to the Forest Service.

December 21, 2020: Excellon stakes 175 new claims, increasing their property size by 28%.

January 12, 2021: The Forest Service updates their Kilgore Project page with a scoping letter and a draft environmental assessment. This assessment is nearly identical to the one the Judge revoked, updating three things: accounting for the already-constructed (a) drill sites and (b) roads from 2019 before the court-ordered halt, and (c) a change to where they will get water from. Working around having to do any extra assessments for Yellowstone cutthroat, they will not take water from Corral Creek but instead from Beaver Creek off of Forest Service land.

February 1, 2021: Excellon Resources publishes a detailed presentation with six pages of intended plans to turn the Kilgore Project into open-pit cyanide heap leach mines.

We Know Their Endgame, So Let’s Just End the Game Now

With each expansion we approve, we compromise more wilderness in the Centennials. Each expansion comes with new roads and new drill pads ruining our stream-beds and polluting our groundwater and drainages; comes with deforestation of whitebark pines, currently under consideration for protected status under the Endangered Species Act; comes with more heavy machinery spewing out carbon and noise and light pollution threatening migratory land animals, birds, and an already strained ecosystem.

Do we want open-pit cyanide mines in our beloved Yellowstone region? If not, let’s just say no now before thousands more acres of wilderness get devastated.