AME Roundup 2025: The Yukon recap

The 2025 AME Roundup was held in Vancouver last week.

The annual mining and exploration conference attracts hundreds of people from the Yukon, along with companies, investors, governments and vendors from across western Canada, Alaska and beyond.

Here are some Yukon items from the week.

Hardrock mining takes a hit

Hardrock mining and exploration in the Yukon took a major hit last year due to the heap leach failure at Victoria Gold's Eagle Gold mine, one of two active hard-rock projects in the territory. 

While some numbers are still coming in, the Yukon Geological Survey (YGS) estimates that mineral production was at least $190 million in 2024, down from $513 million the year before. Exploration spending also comparatively shrunk by nine per cent.

The territory's other hardrock mine, Hecla's Keno Hill project, reported good silver production, with the metal accounting for just less than 60 per cent of the total mineral production figure. 

The Yukon's placer mining industry, meanwhile, reported a record-breaking season, producing the most gold recorded since 1886 — 85,799 crude ounces, which yielded a production value of $230 million. The YGS attributed that to high gold prices, good weather during the mining season and a slight increase in activity compared to the year before. 

The vast majority of placer projects — 70 per cent — were in the Dawson area. 

Hardrock exploration, meanwhile, remained active in the Yukon last year despite the Eagle Gold situation, with 84 projects ongoing as of Nov. 30, 2024. Just less than a third of those projects were on the traditional territory of the First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun. The Kaska Nation saw the second-highest concentration of exploration on, followed by the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in and Selkirk First Nation.  

Gold remained the top mineral people were aiming for, followed by copper, silver lead-zinc and tungsten.

More than 5,000 new quartz claims were staked in 2024, with nearly 60 per cent of those in the Whitehorse area. 

Back-to-back meetings for Yukon leaders

Energy, mines and resources minister John Streicker said he had a number of conversations about what the future of mining in the Yukon would look like, including the status of the territory's new minerals legislation. 

He told CBC News that it was still a work-in-progress, with the government now trying to develop a "framework" with First Nations governments that can then be brought to industry. He also said there was an "important lesson to learn" with regards to the Eagle Gold failure, and that the stakes for the new legislation were high. 

"The legacy of mining can't be contamination, or who's going to support mining? We need to make sure that mining is done well and right so that we don't have these kinds of failures and disasters… We just must get this right," he said. 

Streicker also took the opportunity to have meetings on other topics while in Vancouver, including on connecting British Columbia's electrical grid to the Yukon's.

Premier Ranj Pillai was not made available for an interview but emphasized the territory's potential when it came to critical minerals during a talk Monday at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference, which ran next-door to Roundup.

"We have diplomats at our door every month asking how they can play a role," Pillai told the audience, adding "there's going to be some innovation and ownership on the critical minerals side" in the next two-to-three months.

Deputy premier Jeanie McLean, meanwhile, spoke at a Roundup panel about community safety, describing it as a foundation for economic reconciliation.

"The first time I had a conversation about this very topic, it was received much differently than it is today, so it's important and I think industry is receptive to it and wanting to find ways where they can participate," she said. 

The Yukon Party also sent a delegation to Roundup, including leader Currie Dixon. 

"We're hearing a lot about challenges with the infrastructure, challenges with energy and challenges with the permitting and regulatory system in the Yukon," he said. "And of course looming large over all those conversations [is] the situation that's happened with Eagle Gold."

Like Streicker, Dixon said that while he was also having meetings with other groups while in Vancouver, including a cruise-ship organization whose members travel to Skagway. 

The Yukon NDP made a point to not attend the conference, hosting an anti-Roundup online panel discussion during the week. 

Yukon First Nations were well-represented at Roundup this year.

YESAB restructures, aiming for more timely, reliable assessments 

The Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board (YESAB) has added nine new staff positions in an effort to speed up assessments and build better relationships with First Nations.

The new jobs, which include auxiliary support and engagement staff, are part of a larger restructuring that's also seen the board evaluate the roles and responsibilities of existing positions, executive director Kent Bretzlaff said in an interview. 

"To a lot of people that probably sounds like … getting more resources to create more bureaucracy, but it's quite the opposite, we're trying to just get back to where we're supposed to be," he said. 

"We've been heads down only being able to write assessments for too long and that kind of reflects the process and organization that we have been for 20 years... We need to adapt and that's what this is trying to achieve."

The restructuring, being funded by the federal government, takes effect on Feb. 3. The board is also undertaking a review of how its designated offices function. 

YESAB is an independent body that assesses development project proposals for potential negative environmental and socioeconomic effects. It then issues a recommendation for the project to either proceed, proceed with conditions, or not proceed.

In recent years, however, the board has struggled with staff and board-member retention — at one point losing quorum — while dealing with a sharp increase in project applications. 

Yukoners recognized with awards 

Two Yukoners received awards at a ceremony Wednesday night — Snowline Gold Corp. CEO Scott Berdahl, and the head of the Yukon Geological Survey's head of regional bedrock geology, Maurice Colpron.

Berdahl received the H.H. "Spud" Huestis Award, in recognition of his work on finding a significant gold deposit in the Selwyn Basin.

Colpron, meanwhile, received a special tribute award for his work on mapping the Rackla belt and, according to an AME summary, "his valued contributions to the understanding of western Canadian and Alaskan Cordilleran tectonics and metallogeny."

A Yukon company, Archer, Cathro and Associates, received the David Barr Award for "its leadership in developing a culture of safety in exploration in the Yukon over the past 60 years."

Companies look forward to 2025 season

The 2024 season was challenging for some Yukon mining companies, including Banyan Gold. The company's AurMac project is located north of Mayo on the Victoria Gold access road and was threatened by both nearby wildfires and the Eagle Gold heap leach failure. 
 
Still, CEO and president Tara Christie said Banyan managed to complete its planned drilling programme in the fall. She said she expected this year to be a little quieter, with a focus on completing desk work like technical studies and economic assessments, with just one drill operating on-site.

For BMC Minerals, the company behind the proposed Kudz Ze Kayah project in southeastern Yukon, president and CEO Scott Donaldson said 2024 had produced some promising drill hits he was excited to follow up on.

 "We found a lot of new, high-grade ore where we were hoping to find it," he said.

Yukon courts have put Kudz Ze Kayah on pause twice now after finding that Canada and the Yukon failed to properly consult with the Kaska Nation on several of the project's potential impacts. 

Donaldson said the company was waiting on the latest round of court-ordered consultation to be completed.  

Besides mining companies themselves, Roundup is also well-attended by businesses that provide supplies or services to the industry.

Tintina Air president and CEO Ian Cosco said exploration-and-mining-related business accounted for 87 per cent of the company's revenue last year, and that the conference is a good chance to get an idea of how busy the coming months will be.

"We don't necessarily add too many clients while we're here but the conversations we have with our current clients are always productive and get a good feel for what we need to be prepared for," he said. 

Lots of attention on the Yukon, chamber of mines says 

More than 1,000 people attended the Yukon Night event Monday, according to Yukon Chamber of Mines executive director Jonas Smith — the largest-ever attendance for the event on record.

Like Pillai, Smith said the territory was being thrust into the spotlight as interest in a secure supply chain for critical minerals grows, and "that's something that is going to put wind in our sails."

"We rely on minerals to have our modern lives and I think that that demand is only going to go up," Jonas Smith said. 

"And we look at the situation across the world and some of these other countries where minerals potentially can come from… We know that we can do it ethically and produce these minerals in a manner that benefits all Yukoners and members of our community."

Smith also said meetings and conversations at Roundup are largely positive and productive, with everyone wanting to "make sure that the benefits that the mining industry brings are shared adequately with all Yukoners" while mitigating any potential downsides.