Missoula News

Column: WiLD BILL

Rock Creek Mine Decision Sells Off Grizzly’s Future

By Bill Schneider, 10-26-06

I suppose mitigation is a fact of life nowadays, but every time I say the word, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I prefer we call it legalized bribery, and bribing our government to buy the approval of a bad development will always be a lousy idea. All we're really doing is selling off public resources, which is exactly what's happening up on Rock Creek in Montana's Cabinet Mountain Wilderness.

Do we really want to do this?

As background, various mining companies (hard to keep track of all the mergers and bankruptcies) have, for many years, been proposing a monstrous mine on the narrowest section (only about a mile across) of the hour-glass-shaped Cabinet Mountains Wilderness, effectively slicing the small wilderness area into two very small wilderness areas. The current owner of the Rock Creek leases is Toronto-based Revett Minerals.

The greens have repeatedly and successfully sued the Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) over earlier approvals of the Rock Creek Mine, claiming it further threatened the already extremely threatened grizzly population in the area. It wasn't hard for them to make their case. There's no conceivable way a massive increase in human activity stemming from a huge development will have a positive impact, especially when you consider the incremental effect of satellite development and add in other negative influences, such as illegal shooting, second home development and timbering, which have already driven the grizzly population to its lowest-ever level, less than 40 bears.

Now, the FWS, under the thumb of former Idaho governor Dirk Kempthorne, has issued another favorable opinion saying the mine not only won't hurt the struggling grizzly population, but will help it. Any professional wildlife biologist, including those in the FWS, must have a hard time saying that with a straight face.

While acknowledging the environmental impact, the FWS claims the bribe, the roughly a million dollars per year for the estimated 35-year life of the mine that Revett agreed to pay to mitigate the damage, turns the project into a "positive net effect" on the grizzly bear. For a lot of bureaucratic jargon and details, here's a link to the entire "non-jeopardy opinion."

I can't speak to the science, but I can say it's distasteful to think that our own government agency legally charged with protecting threatened and endangered species can't come close to doing what needs to be done to bring the big bear back in the Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem. Instead of having adequate budgets to do the job, agencies like the FWS have to go begging and grumbling to mining companies for the money--if the company can get a green light for project that would never happen otherwise, of course.

So, now we're making a deal with a giant Canadian mining company to help the grizzly bear in northwestern Montana, Revett agrees to buy some private land and protect it with conservation easements, build a water treatment plant, put up bear-resistant garbage cans and food storage devices for the county and in Forest Service campgrounds, fund some public information and education programs, cover salaries of two full-time bear specialists to monitor the population and one enforcement officer, construct sediment control facilities, and pay for other mitigation.

For me, the garbage cans stand out as a shining example of what we really have here, the bottom line, so to speak. Our federal government has to sell off the future of the grizzly bear because we can't come up with enough cash to put trash cans in campgrounds, but it can afford a billion dollars per week to fight The Trillion Dollar War over in Iraq.

In light of this pending agreement for the Rock Creek Mine, I have to ask how many of you have spent much time out on public land anywhere and not seen examples of past deals with mining companies--streams running red with acid waste, huge scars in mountainsides, abandoned shafts, pits and tailing piles, all left unreclaimed to remind us of our Numeral Ono national environmental embarrassment known as the Mining Law of 1872, which basically gives away public resources to miners.

How many times have government agencies made deals with mining companies only to see the reclamation or mitigation never happen? Or paid later by taxpayers? Mining companies regularly go into bankruptcy, get sold when somebody picks up their penny stocks, or merge into international conglomerates. In many cases, mitigation and reclamation agreements end up lost and unfulfilled.

I know our government agencies see this history, too, and ask for performance bonds to insure the company holds up its end of the deal, but even these get axed by bankruptcy courts and in mergers and acquisitions where international laws come into play.

Pardon my lack of confidence that Revett will come through on its end of the deal and help us save the grizzly bear. Or that the mitigation plan is truly a net gain. But even if it is, what do we do when the money runs out? Sell another permit to devastate another high-altitude valley to another mining company? Revett Minerals, incidentally, has several other mineral deposits under lease in the same area. Perhaps we can do a multi-valley deal. I'm quite confident that most development associated with the mine, such as residential development and access roads, won't go away when the mine closes.

And monitoring? Does that mean what I think it does? Watching the bear population decline instead of protecting it? Seems like spending our money to measure the speed a ship sinks instead of buying more lifeboats.

And what if the monitoring shows the mine has a bigger than expected impact? First off, will anybody be surprised? Secondly, what do we do? Close down the mine? That's a laugher.

Here's what it says in the FWS press release: "If monitoring shows elevated or unanticipated risks to grizzly bears, the Service would request re-initiation of consultation to address the issue." Now, doesn't that boost your confidence? I'm imagining Revett's reply: "Thank you very much, but we've had enough consultation."

If there is one place in all of grizzly country where we should not have a major development, mining or otherwise, it is the key travel corridor down the already pinched spine of the Cabinet Mountains. Yet, that's exactly what the agency charged with saving the grizzly bear, the FWS, has agreed to do. Instead of bartering with the grizzly's future, the FWS should be figuring out how to widen the Rock Creek corridor with land acquisition, conservation easements, lease buyouts, road closures and other protective measures.

Extinction is another harsh word, and it leaves an even worse taste. But we probably should get ready to use it when talking about grizzly bears in the Cabinet-Yaak.

If you'd like to chime in, here's the email address for the FWS office working on the Rock Creek Mine: MountainPrairie@fws.gov.

Read Wild Bill's previous column, Preserving Pheasant Hunting.

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