the film forum library tutorial contact

$13 Billion in Idaho Gold. A Mineral Critical to U.S. Defense. And Fresh Fears for Salmon by Kevin Fixler and Ian Max Stevenson Idaho Statemsan, February 5, 2025

Perpetua plans to use 21st-century extraction techniques to
reduce its impact while also doubling the existing project site.

Kneeling beside a stream 30 miles north of McCall in late August, Emmit Taylor Jr. watched two Chinook salmon scull upstream. The fish were at the terminus of a remarkable journey from the Pacific Ocean to the inland Northwest, and had returned to complete their life cycle.

As Taylor, the Nez Perce Tribe's watershed division director, looked on and the pair pushed against the current to spawn, his thoughts strayed elsewhere in the same watershed.

There, tucked away in a remote part of the Payette National Forest in Central Idaho, the Canadian mining company Perpetua Resources has designs on transforming a rugged forest valley to unearth treasures deep below the surface in the name of American progress.

The plan, which calls for reopening a long-abandoned mine with a toxic history, will move mountains across miles of landscape close to the South Fork Salmon River.

The U.S. Forest Service issued a permit last month for what Perpetua dubbed the Stibnite Gold Project. The tribe and others have opposed the open-pit gold and antimony mine at each step of the approval process, with full-scale digging operations slated for 2028.

Unlike past mines at Stibnite, which date to 1899 and contributed to the environmental damage still there, Perpetua plans to use 21st-century extraction techniques to reduce its impact while also doubling the existing project site. The company is here for the long haul, Perpetua officials said, and, once finished with operations, intends to improve the area compared to what it inherited.

"We've interdeveloped or interwoven cleanup of these legacy impacts with modern, responsible mining activity," Mckinsey Lyon, Perpetua Resources' vice president of external affairs, told the Idaho Statesman. "And we've done that because we're so serious about our commitment that we can leave this place better."

The company projects a polished public image focused on modern technologies and ecological restoration, touting that much of the antimony it produces will go toward advanced batteries and military needs. But conservationists and Nez Perce tribal members like Taylor say the mining company has tried to cut corners and limit environmental oversight, and what it really covets from the region's hillsides is the same as the miners from past generations: gold.

"Perpetua has a really glamorous vision for what the site is going to look like afterwards, and I hope that's successful," John Robison, public lands and wildlife director with the Idaho Conservation League, told the Statesman. "I don't see that from the mine plan."

The company's aims trace the well-worn path of Idaho's origins as a state rooted in the nation's gold rush. But besides gold, the Gem State also boasts a wealth of critical minerals, including those important to accelerating the clean-energy transition. That position grants Idaho a seat at the table in the push to meet U.S. mineral needs to keep pace with global rivals.

The prospect of domestic supply chains has attracted investment, and also bolstered Perpetua's standing. The return of mining to Stibnite also would dig pits hundreds of feet deep, use chemicals that risk greater harm to the environment and build a 475-foot-tall dam to store tailings near the border with the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. A meadow with a creek running through it would forever be buried beneath the tailings, which are the waste material that remains after mining.

The plan has dismayed the Nez Perce Tribe, which maintains a spiritual relationship with the salmon and an obligation to protect the species. They fear that a new mine will kill off the already-threatened fish in the Salmon River watershed.

"They're just hanging on by a thread," Taylor said of salmon. "What is this mine? ... Maybe it's the next straw that takes them out."

Perpetua envisions wins for environment, U.S. defense

Just outside the rural community of Yellow Pine, with its population of a few dozen year-round residents, lies the vast mine site, rich with one of the largest known reserves of antimony both in the U.S. and outside of Chinese control. Perpetua has pitched the project to the public, investors and government regulators as a way to shore up the nation's stockpile of the critical mineral with a number of important uses, not least of which is for U.S. defense. The company also has promised cleanup of Stibnite's woeful legacy in the process.

Mining restarted there in the 1930s, when tungsten and antimony were crucial to the military for armored vehicles and ammunition in World War II. The Congressional Record noted that the mine shortened the war by at least a year and saved 1 million American soldiers' lives. The digging to meet military needs continued during the Korean War.

But that mining wrought environmental damage that remains.

Mining claims at Stibnite changed hands over the decades, until the last company that owned them departed in the 1990s, leaving behind enough mine waste for the EPA to consider Stibnite for superfund designation.

As much as one ton of arsenic is estimated to leach into tributaries of the Salmon River each year from the old mine tailings, and the fish for which the river is named have been blocked from more than 20 miles of habitat above the mine for generations. Perpetua's post-mining restoration plan would fix these environmental wrongs of the past, company officials have said.

"The site today is a mess and there are no other alternatives being considered," Lyon told the Statesman in an interview. "I love the idea that this project can rewrite that history and can say, 'Even though it's not our mess, we will clean it up.' "

After three years of construction, the publicly traded company plans to spend the next two decades mining, processing and exploring the valley at Stibnite through three open pits. Shutdown and reclamation of the site is expected to take another five years after that. Using a water treatment plant at the mine, the company hopes to prevent tailings from contaminating local streams. The company expects water treatment would not be needed 40 years after mining starts, according to its plan.

In the process, Perpetua projects it will create hundreds of well-paying jobs in rural Idaho while restoring the area, which would rebuild a river channel. Already, the company reports it has spent more than $17 million on initial cleanup of some mine tailings in a deal brokered with the EPA to reduce risk of further water contamination from the site.

Perpetua remains in negotiations with the U.S. Forest Service over a required reclamation bond that is designed to cover potential environmental harm. Estimates are in the hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the company, including about $206 million to close down a chemical facility that uses cyanide as part of the mining process.

The plan, more than a dozen years in the making -- eight of those years under environmental review before it was permitted -- has the backing of Idaho's four federal lawmakers. That includes Rep. Mike Simpson, who toured the proposed mine site in 2021 and has co-sponsored legislation that promoted mining and shortened the environmental review period for projects with critical minerals.

"Our only antimony in this country right now comes from, guess where, China (and) countries that don't like us very much," Simpson, a Republican, said last year in a phone interview with the Statesman. "So I've been very supportive of what they're trying to do and working with them."

(bluefish notes: domestic sources of antimony are mentioned below.)

Strictly mining antimony also hasn't been financially viable. The critical mineral's value has been soft in recent years. But China, which has essentially cornered the market through strategic purchases of global reserves, recently banned exports of antimony, sending its prices higher over scarcity concerns.

Antimony is used in flame retardants and emerging clean-energy technologies, including in liquid-metal batteries and for purifying glass in solar panels. Antimony also is needed for munitions, such as missiles and some nuclear weapons, and other military equipment, like night-vision goggles and infrared sensors.

What is Antimony?
Antimony is a shiny, silvery-white metal hidden deep in the Earth's crust. After mining, the ore can be combined with other metals to form useful alloys. This versatile metal powers batteries, stops fires in textiles, and adds flair to paints, ceramics and even fireworks.

A Mountain of Metal
According to the Stibnite Gold Project feasibility study, the area planned for mining in Idaho holds 148 million pounds of antimony -- about the weight of 336 Statues of Liberty. It's one of the largest reserves in the U.S.

Strategic Antimony
The mine has generated interest from the U.S. government as a strategic mineral reserve. Perpetua Resources was awarded $75 million in federal grants and also has a contract with a Bill Gates-backed battery company.

Antimony from the mine is expected to be used in solar panels, high-grade munitions and military night-vision goggles. Perpetua is exploring processing its Stibnite reserves at U.S. Antimony's plant in Montana.

Other domestic antimony deposits exist in Alaska, Montana and Nevada, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. But Idaho's Stibnite Gold Project is considered the most dig-ready, having been approved through the National Environmental Policy Act, also known as NEPA.

"This approval elevates the Stibnite Gold Project to an elite class of projects in America that have cleared NEPA," Jon Cherry, Perpetua's president and CEO, said in a statement. "The Stibnite Gold Project can deliver decisive wins for our communities, the environment, the economy, and (U.S.) national security."

In the first six years of production, most of the 148 million pounds of antimony at the site could be mined, meeting about 35% of annual U.S. demand for the critical mineral over that time. That reserve also would provide for long-term national defense needs, Perpetua reported.

The latter has drawn the attention of the Department of Defense. Over the past two years, Perpetua has received more than $59 million in federal critical mineral grants through the Defense Production Act to prove it can offer high-grade antimony for meeting national security goals. In 2023, the company also was handed a $15.5 million contract from another arm of the Defense department to prove a fully domestic supply chain for antimony from the Stibnite site, bringing the total federal funding to about $75 million.

Last year, the Export-Import Bank of the U.S., an independent executive branch agency that provides credit when private lenders aren't willing, sent Perpetua a letter of interest that the company qualifies for up to $1.8 billion in project debt financing. Overall, the Stibnite Gold Project was last estimated in 2020 to cost $1.3 billion to build and mine, according to company officials.

Meanwhile, to help earn local buy-in, Perpetua struck agreements with Central Idaho communities, including Yellow Pine and towns in Valley County, to give proceeds to those that stand to be most impacted by the large-scale and decades-long project. The community agreements call for Perpetua to give them a total of at least $9.75 million and 300,000 shares in the company as it reaches various benchmarks, full-scale mining operations and final reclamation among them.

Since 2014, Perpetua has paid out $3.3 million-plus in "community contributions," which includes local student scholarships and various supplies, the company reported. Of that total, $400,000 has been paid out through the agreements, in addition to 150,000 company shares.

"A mining company 100 years ago coming up here wasn't going to the lengths that we are operating under," Lyon said, "whether it is to ensure that it's being done right environmentally and being left with a net-benefit, to engagement and commitments on the social side."

Willie Sullivan, a part-time Yellow Pine resident who winters in Caldwell, has chipped in toward the effort by appearing in Perpetua's promotional materials for the mine. He said the company's continued presence has given him confidence it will follow through on its commitments to restore the area after years of environmental degradation, while also offering a potential boost to the local economy that's become mostly reliant on seasonal recreation.

"If it was going to fix itself, it would have already done that," Sullivan said in an interview with the Statesman. "It's not going to be pristine when it's done, but it will be much better than it is now. And, I say, they're going to make a lot of money. This isn't altruism."

Perpetua has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Yellow Pine, said fellow resident Lynn Imel, who sits on the company's community advisory council for the project. That money went to local infrastructure improvements, including toward a water system and a helipad for medical evacuations, in addition to Perpetua sponsoring the community's annual harmonica festival, for which it's known.

"And that benefits everybody," Imel told the Statesman. "We couldn't have afforded that. So we've got good equipment as needed. It's a huge amount of money. We've never added it up."

The mine was approved in the final weeks of the Biden administration, and influential decision-makers in Washington, D.C., may have been the final weight on the scale to achieve federal permitting for the contested project, Sullivan said. Still needed for the project to move forward are a federal discharge permit and several state environmental permits. The Biden administration did not return several requests from the Statesman for its position on the mine before exiting the White House last month.

"Antimony is going to be, I think, the government's thumb on getting this approved," Sullivan said.

'What gold has done to our people'

Gold has a sordid history for Nimiipuu people, now often known as Nez Perce.

Memories of "what gold has done to our people" stir anger among tribal members, Taylor said.

Decades before Idaho statehood, dozens of leaders of the Nimiipuu people signed a treaty in 1855 with the U.S. government. In exchange for ceding nearly all of their lands that spanned much of the Pacific Northwest, the tribe was granted a 7.5 million-acre reservation around the borders of present-day Idaho, Washington and Oregon. The Nez Perce would maintain exclusive fishing rights on their reservation, and also retain fishing rights at their "usual and accustomed places."

The region's salmon populations were a primary source of food for the tribe, and the fish were bountiful in Central Idaho. Two centuries ago, an estimated 20 million salmon and steelhead trout migrated up the Columbia River and its tributaries to spawn each year. The aptly named South Fork Salmon River watershed produced the largest numbers of salmon in the Columbia River basin, said Wesley Keller, a regional fisheries biologist with the Nez Perce.

Salmon also hold a preeminent position in the tribe's spiritual creation story, such that the ritual of fishing for salmon holds religious as well as nutritional significance. In the creation story, Chinook salmon were the first animals to stand up and advocate for Nimiipuu people's lives, which brought them to their lands in the Pacific Northwest, and has since created a relationship of obligation and respect between the tribe and the fish, which play a central role in annual ceremonies.

In a phone call with the Statesman, Nakia Williamson, the Nez Perce's cultural resources director, explained the origin of what salmon represent to the tribe, hesitating to use English words that fail to describe the meaning he wished to communicate.

"Our original way of understanding ourselves is connected to what you people call 'resources,' " Williamson said, also listing water, deer meat, roots and berries. At a springtime ceremony, the first food tribal members taste is the first salmon of the year. He compared the ceremonies to the Christian Eucharist, when worshipers consume bread, wine or juice in a ritual that can reenact Jesus Christ's Last Supper.

Almost immediately after the tribe agreed to the treaty, American lust for gold broke its promise.

Even before the treaty's ratification, white settlers trespassed on the Nez Perce reservation in search of gold, according to the National Park Service. By 1863, the tribe's reservation shrank by 90%. Provisions of the treaties were often not enforced for the first 100 years, and many government decisions that affect the Nez Perce have been made "without formal or meaningful consultation" with the tribe, Williamson said.

Language in the original treaty that protects ancestral fishing as well as hunting and gathering rights is still in effect. Yet the tribe has seen its bequest eroded.

For more than a half-century, actions taken by U.S. agencies and companies have jeopardized the passage salmon must make upriver each year to birth a new generation. Hydroelectric dams, agricultural runoff and rising water temperatures linked to climate change have all contributed to the near-elimination of native Chinook salmon.

Since the first of the Columbia River dams opened in 1938, native salmon populations in the region have declined by more than 90%, according to a report by Washington state.

Aside from the Nez Perce losing access to the area near the Stibnite mine for at least 20 years, the tribe worries that the project would only worsen the perilous situation. The tribe's opposition overlaps with many of the same concerns from environmentalists, namely that the massive industrial operation could have calamitous consequences for threatened fish and other species.

"If we use the same rule book we've used for past mining, we're going to end up creating the same mistakes of degraded watersheds and public health issues," Robison said.

Where the salmon go
Chinook salmon travel over 800 miles from the Pacific Ocean to the Stibnite site to nest. They travel up the Columbia River to the Snake River. And eventually swim south through the South Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho. By the time they reach Stibnite, they are nearing the end of their life cycle and are vulnerable to stressors. They will die after they spawn.

'We got blocked by them'
Standing amid the packed dirt and gravel roads that fill the mountain valley at Stibnite, Mary Faurot Petterson had tears in her eyes. Lupine, a brightly colored flower that grows in conical columns, was blooming.

For years, she and other conservationists tried to grow a variety of seed mixtures on the heavily disturbed soil. At over 7,000 feet in elevation, Stibnite is a difficult place for plant life to reestablish itself: Cold, long winters leave only a short growing season.

A former district ranger on the Payette and Boise national forests, Faurot Petterson retired in 2016 and has devoted herself to opposing the Stibnite project. The fisheries biologist is a founding member of a small nonprofit in McCall, called Save the South Fork Salmon, and an Idaho Conservation League board member.

In interviews with the Statesman, Faurot Petterson and Ann Maest, a Colorado-based aqueous geochemist hired by conservation groups to examine Perpetua's proposal, explained their concerns about water contamination and changes to water temperature. They also expressed skepticism that the company's array of plans to prevent environmental damage will prove feasible, including a planned mile-long diversion tunnel for salmon to climb while mining takes place.

Maest said the amount of antimony -- which is poisonous to humans -- projected to come from the mine is greater than she has ever seen in the dozens of other mine projects she has reviewed.

Perpetua also did not consider the effects of climate change in its models, Maest said. Since mining is already expected to significantly increase water temperatures in nearby streams, she said leaving out added temperature increases -- or decreases in stream flow -- were a "really big deal."

The mine would expend significant energy between operations, water treatment and the materials that will need to be shipped to the site. The mine's greenhouse gas emissions could amount to 1% of Idaho's statewide totals, according to an environmental analysis by the Forest Service. Based on antimony's use in clean-energy technologies, those emissions are expected to be offset, company officials said.

Other climate-related events, like 100- or 500-year flooding episodes -- which are becoming more frequent -- could overwhelm the capacity of a water treatment plant, Maest said, or otherwise impair safety measures. Maest is familiar with the historical unreliability of water quality predictions in hard-rock mines: In 2006, she co-authored a study of dozens of U.S. mines that found 75% of them underestimate the harmful effects they will have on water quality.

At Stibnite, environmentalists still remember the Dakota Mining Corp., which in the 1990s left a toxic soup behind.

"I saw firsthand how the mining company left in the night and left a terrible mess behind for taxpayers to deal with," Faurot Petterson told the Statesman.

Faurot Petterson and the Nez Perce Tribe refuted Perpetua's assertions that it is the only viable path toward restoration. A coalition of conservation groups and federal agencies spent years working to restore the degraded remains of past mining at Stibnite, they told the Statesman.

In 2019, the tribe sued Perpetua for alleged Clean Water Act violations. Four years later, the two groups settled and Perpetua agreed to pay $5 million to improve the South Fork Salmon River watershed.

In its final environmental review, the Forest Service concluded that the local environment -- even with its toxic history -- would be better off without new mining than following Perpetua Resources' plan. It granted the mining permit anyway.

More than 15 years ago, before the company that became Perpetua bought the mining claims to the site, the tribe was in talks with the previous owner to secure fish passage above the mine's main pit. Negotiations were called off after mining of the land again became the priority, Keller said.

"They're basically doing the same thing we tried to do in 2007," Keller said of Perpetua's restoration efforts, "and we got blocked by them."

Gold 'useless,' expert says. But it pays for the project
The renewed push for the mine through pursuit of antimony is still grounded in the project's outsized profit driver: gold. For years, Perpetua went by its original name, Midas Gold, and its own corporate documents marketed the mining project as Golden Meadows before the title was jettisoned at the end of 2014.

An independent study funded by the company broke down the project's economic profitability by metal: About 93% from gold, 7% from antimony and less than 1% from silver. A 2019 document from Midas Gold touted the importance of gold, and called it the "most useful mineral in the world."

Just over a third of gold in the U.S. was used for jewelry, the document stated. China and Japan list gold as a critical mineral, while Europe and the U.S. do not.

Gold is largely "useless," Luke Danielson, an attorney who runs a nonprofit that researches mining policies and teaches at Western Colorado University, told the Statesman. While more than 2,000 metric tons of gold was made into jewelry in 2023, less than 300 tons were used in technology sectors, according to the World Gold Council.

"You can make a really great case for producing some of these minerals, but the gold itself doesn't do the world a hell of a lot of good," Danielson said.

In some other countries, he said, a mine like the one proposed by Perpetua would never be allowed without consent from local Indigenous people. But to the company, gold remains the engine of progress.

That doesn't come without risks and costs. "You create 20 to 80 tons of mine waste to produce one ounce of gold, and ultimately that gold goes back in the ground in someone's vault or someone's jewelry box," Robison said. "So it really doesn't serve society given the damage to our environment."

Since the company's name change, Perpetua has spent several years downplaying its focus on gold, instead centering public communications campaigns on clean energy and restoration.

"It was Midas Gold, Golden Meadows, gold, gold, gold," Keller said. "Then all of a sudden, it was like, 'This gold stuff, we're not making headway here.' Then it became green energy."

In 2021, Midas Gold rebranded itself Perpetua Resources not long after relocating its corporate office from British Columbia to Boise, in efforts to further cast itself tied to Idaho. The company's name plays off of the Latin phrase Esto Perpetua, which translates to "Let it be perpetual." The phrase is included on the state's seal alongside a miner, hearkening back to Idaho's history before statehood in 1890.

But pressed, the company, still publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange in addition to the Nasdaq Stock Market in New York, doesn't shy away from the reality -- financial and otherwise.

"We are a gold project," Lyon, the company spokesperson, told the Statesman. "And we are grateful for it, because it's gold that pays for the development of the site, it's gold that pays for the legacy restoration, and it's gold that not only pays for but then also insulates critical mineral production from foreign influence."

The portfolio of Perpetua's controlling shareholder, billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson, also reveals the company's primary purpose. Paulson & Co., which owns more than 39% of company shares, has considerable investments in seven other gold mining companies, all but one based in Canada. Paulson is a major Republican donor with deep ties to President Donald Trump, and was on the shortlist to become Treasury secretary for Trump's second term, The Wall Street Journal reported.

'The fish runs have been failing'
Once the snow melts in the spring, members of the Nez Perce head out to fish runs in the mountains of Central Idaho, wading into streams in search of the migrating salmon that generations of their ancestors have pursued. Snagging their first Chinook of the season is a time-honored tradition that Nez Perce families look forward to all year, Taylor said.

For some tribal members, that trip was to Johnson Creek, the area near the Stibnite mine. But dwindling numbers of people have headed there in recent decades.

"It's not as common anymore," said Williamson, the tribe's cultural resources director. "The fish runs have been failing in the last few decades, so it's really limiting the places that our people used to go because of those runs that are just not quite what they used to be."

Questions about the longevity of the salmon, and the tribe's stance that the Stibnite mine deepens those concerns, have raised their existential fears.

"We know that if they go, then we're going to go," Williamson said. "And if Nez Perce people fall, then everyone else is going to fall soon after that."

Back at the stream north of McCall, Taylor gazed at the pair of salmon undulating in the shallow brook. The female thrashed her tail, letting her emerald scales break the current's surface. The male shadowed her, shivering after her full-bodied exertions above sandy pits where ripples of water flowed through.

Nearby, some of their fellow travelers had already perished in the sparkling tributary, their lifeless bodies cast aside to make way for the next wave of salmon.

The breeding fish are the beginning of a regeneration. The dead ones bring large amounts of nutrients from their lives at sea, which become compost for the ecosystems in the mountains. The females' eggs, fertilized by the males' shivers, will hatch over the next few months. After developing in fresh water, these young fish will travel their ancestors' journey in reverse, back out to sea.

A red-tailed hawk soared overhead in the midday sun as Taylor leaned down to the bank of the creek. He pulled up a plant used by the tribe as medicine, a custom passed down by their ancestors and still practiced today, and trained his eyes back on the spawning fish.

Taylor said he remembered when his son, Kross, was in his early teens, there were several years in a row that the family could not go fishing in the summer because the number of salmon returning to mountain streams was too low. But when they did make it back, Kross quickly recalled the best spots in the creek to harvest salmon -- writing the next story in his family's long history of fishing.

"When they're gone ..." Taylor said, and trailed off. He focused his attention to the east toward the mountains with their deposits of gold.

Related Pages:
U.S. Forest Service Approves Stibnite Gold Mine in Central Idaho by Clark Corbin, Idaho Capital Sun, 1/7/25

Related Sites:
Initial cleanup underway at abandoned Stibnite Mine as company hopes to resume mining by Clark Corbin, Idaho Capital Sun 8/30/22
Feds issue draft approval to resume mining at Idaho's historical Stibnite Gold Mine by Clark Corbin, Idaho Capital Sun 9/6/24

Behind the Reporting
Over the course of a year, the Idaho Statesman dug deeply into the proposed gold and antimony mine in Central Idaho's South Fork Salmon River watershed. We strived to learn everything we could about the project, the company behind it and those who stand to be affected by the mine, including the Nez Perce Tribe. We visited the Stibnite site and community of Yellow Pine, conducted nearly two dozen interviews and reviewed documents obtained in public records requests from several state and federal agencies. In total, we pored over thousands of pages of financial, governmental and permit reports to explain potential impacts on the environment and salmon, as well as obstacles to modern-day mining. The story benefited from the support of an environmental justice reporting grant from the Institute for Journalism & Natural Resources.