Despite opposition from the Nez Perce Tribe, the U.S. Forest Service has signed a final Record of Decision approving Perpetua Resources Corporation’s Stibnite Gold Mining Project, a massive open pit gold mine in the headwaters of Idaho’s South Fork Salmon River.
The Mine sits within the Nez Perce Tribe’s homeland, where the Tribe reserved, in its 1855 and 1863 treaties with the United States, its sovereign rights to fish, hunt, gather, pasture, and travel.
According to a news release from the Nez Perce Tribe, the decision authorizes Perpetua to mine three open pits, establish ore processing facilities, build roads and transmission lines, and create a 475 foot high “tailings storage facility”—an impoundment of 120 million tons of mine tailings that will fill over 400 acres of the Meadow Creek valley and inundate spawning and rearing habitat for native fish. According to the Forest Service’s own final environmental analysis, the mine will destroy fish and wildlife habitat and impair surface water and groundwater regimes well past the life of the mine.
Despite the Forest Service’s decision, Perpetua cannot begin mining until it has secured all
necessary state and federal authorizations.
