Sulphur Creek was one of the first places gold miners struck it rich in the Klondike at the turn of the 20th century.
The project, spearheaded by the Washington, DC–based NGO Resolve, aims to produce what the partners call Salmon Gold.
Stephen D’Esposito, Resolve’s president and CEO, came up with the idea after flying over the Dawson City area more than a decade ago.
These are the most ecologically diverse and important habitats in the boreal forest, says Sebastian Jones, a fish, wildlife, and habitat analyst with the Yukon Conservation Society.
“To have long-term impact you need to take the land out of circulation.” By squeezing the last gold out of old areas and restoring them to a high standard, Resolve and its partners aim to make it economically infeasible for anyone to rework those spots; by choosing areas with additional regulatory protections they also prevent reworking after restoration.
In 2018, Resolve raised money from charities and companies, including the jeweler Tiffany & Co and the tech giant Apple, which uses small amounts of gold for conductors in phones and tablets.
In 2019, Race used the funds to restore the former mine site beyond the legal requirement, turning it into a park of diverse native species and recontouring the creek so it had the pools and fast-running shallow waters that salmon like.
To date, the Salmon Gold program has funded five projects on three river systems: Fortymile and Gold Creek in Alaska, and Sulphur Creek in Yukon.
Watershed-level restoration should help Edzerza fulfill his dream of returning salmon to Yukon’s Indian River, just downstream of Sulphur Creek, and on river systems across the north.
Writing has taken Ryan Stuart from mountain biking in Tibet to witnessing global warming in Greenland.