[sammyg2]

There's the irrational PNW response.

Show me a picture of those tailings a few years later.
Show me a picture of tailings that are so remote you'd never be able to find that place.
Show me a picture of those tailings after a couple of winters covered with snow, and then grass, then snow again.

I know where my yard is. I see it all the time. It is not hundreds of miles out in the middle of nowhere in the arctic circle only accessable 4 months out of the year by crossing streams and rivers and moutain ranges in a 4 wheel drive.
It's not in a place where maybe a dozen people get within sight of it every century.
And my yard is MY property. If I want to dig it up I will.


Within years that Yukon land would be grown over with native grasses and weeds and saplings.
Within 20 years there's be trees growing there.
In 30 years you'd have trouble figuring out what land had been mined and what had not.

A whole lot of that land up there they are stripping has already been dredged not that long ago (in the geologic sense, oh boy).

Hey maybe it's a good thing all them glaciers are (not) melting. Those big bad glaciers kill the grass and the only thing left under them is dirt and rocks. Glaciers should be illegal.