The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday cleared the way for approval of a much-maligned copper and silver mine beneath the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness, saying the development would not jeopardize the continued existence of grizzly bears, bull trout or lynx.
"This was a very difficult decision to make," said Ralph Morgenweck, the agency's regional director. "We are very aware of the significance of any impacts on such a small population of grizzly bears."
And while the mine will likely impact bull trout in Rock Creek, those fish "contribute very little to the sustained viability of the bull trout on a larger scale," the agency said in its formal biological opinion. "Harm to this population will have little impact on the long-term recovery of bull trout in the Columbia River Basin."
Environmentalists were incredulous, and promised a lawsuit.
"Clearly, the court of public opinion says this mine is a terrible idea, and now we have to actually take it to the courts," said Tracy Stone-Manning, executive director of the Clark Fork Coalition. "We are back to this ridiculous game that everybody expects environmental groups and agencies to play. Instead of talking about what's appropriate development and where and why, we are stuck in a paradigm that doesn't work."
"Obviously, this is not the future of Montana - this kind of development," she said.
As proposed by Sterling Mining Co. of Veradale, Wash., the mine would produce 10,000 tons of copper and silver from a mine drilled beneath the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness. Mining operations would extend for at least 35 years, including construction.
Of course, the mine's development depends on metal prices as much as on bull trout or grizzly bears, said Frank Duval, Sterling's president. "It will require higher prices than we have today."
Duval, whose businesses have been involved in a laundry list of mine failures and environmental fiascoes, said he will need two or three years to study the Fish and Wildlife Service's biological opinion and the U.S. Forest Service's formal record of decision - which is now expected within 30 days.
At the Fish and Wildlife Service's insistence, the decision notice will include substantial mitigation if the mine is ever developed, including the purchase of 2,400 acres of now privately owned grizzly bear habitat in the Cabinet Mountains - land that will be left free of development and available to grizzly bears.
"Sterling has to meet a lot of obligations," said John McKay, the Kootenai National Forest's project coordinator for the Rock Creek mine. "The whole intent of the biological opinion was that the mine facilities aren't what impact the grizzly bear; it's the number of people who will be drawn to the area by the mine."
"So most of the mitigation is geared toward dealing with the number of people the mine will bring here," he said. "They would have to pay for a full-time law enforcement officer and a full-time wildlife biologist, for example. And all that land they'd buy would be off limits to development."
The Forest Service already issued one record of decision for the Rock Creek mine, but withdrew it last March after the Fish and Wildlife Service withdrew its original biological opinion in response to a lawsuit filed by environmentalists.
The original opinion showed grizzly bears in jeopardy because of the mine, but found no jeopardy for bull trout.
Environmentalists believed the reconsideration would bring about a favorable change; thus, their surprise when the rethinking yielded a finding of no jeopardy for either bull trout or grizzly bears.
What changed?
"The withdrawal of the Montanore mining project on the east side of the Cabinets created a drastically better baseline for grizzly bears," said Anne Vandehey, a wildlife biologist for the Fish and Wildlife Service in Helena. "Now instead of two big mines in the Cabinets, we have one. That was a big factor in this reconsultation."
Noranda Minerals Corp. abandoned its Montanore silver and copper mine last August, saying depressed metals prices and expected future prices made the mine uneconomical. Together, the Montanore and Rock Creek mines would have jeopardized grizzly bears, Vandehey said. Alone, the landscape changed.
Sterling Mining now will have to do all the bear mitigation the two mines would have shared, she said. "So they'll have a lot of work to do."
There are an estimated 30-40 grizzly bears in the Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem, a population so small the federal government has said it warrants listing as an endangered species; it is at imminent risk of extinction.
The bull trout decision did not change, Vandehey added, because "we didn't write the original opinion as clearly as we should have. It wasn't that we made the wrong decision before; we just weren't clear enough about how we got from Point A to Point B to Point C."
Now, of course, all those points will be hashed out in federal court, said Stone-Manning. "From what we can gather, the Fish and Wildlife Service is saying it's okay to put this grizzly bear population - which is hanging on by a thread - into the hands of Sterling Mining Co., which has bankruptcies, Superfund sites and SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) violations in its file."
"What this tells us yet again is that the 1872 Mining Law doesn't work anymore," she said. "This is a very different place than it was in 1872. Grizzly bears live in a very different world."
The bull trout decision, Stone-Manning said, is a shocker. "They're writing off this population of bull trout," she said. "While some may argue whether that violates the Endangered Species Act, it certainly violates the spirit of the act."
Reporter Sherry Devlin can be reached at 523-5268 or at sdevlin@missoulian.com
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