Caribou cited in lawsuit

More studies are needed before a copper and gold mine is reopened upstream from Juneau, Alaska, environmental groups have asserted in a lawsuit against the Canadian government.

Opponents of the Tulsequah Chief project in the Taku River watershed, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have said punching the 100-mile road through one of the largest roadless areas on the continent and reopening the mine could damage or wipe out the protected East Atlin caribou herd.

The case filed Aug. 23 by the Sierra Legal Defense Fund on behalf of the Transboundary Watershed Alliance asks that the Federal Court of Canada bar Transport Canada and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans from approving the road mine work pending further study under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

Citing soaring metal prices worldwide, Redfern Resources of Vancouver sought to reopen the mine about 680 miles northwest of Vancouver near the British Columbia-Alaska border to extract copper, gold and other ore.

Then-Fisheries Minister Geoff Regan said last year there were no serious environmental objections to the plan, adding that it had been subject to eight years of environmental assessments.

Peter Stoffer, a member of parliament who opposes the project, said last year it would endanger salmon runs that support hundreds of fishermen, many of them aboriginal, in the United States and Canada.

A previous lawsuit aimed at stopping the project, filed by the Taku River Tlingit First Nation, failed in the Supreme Court of Canada.

"The project would include construction of a 160-kilometre access road into a pristine, rich and sensitive ecological area with devastating impacts on local wildlife, including a herd of caribou that are supposed to be protected under the federal Species at Risk Act," alliance Executive Director David MacKinnon wrote in a news release.

Much of the lawsuit is focused on a herd of 800 to 1,000 head of caribou that roam the British Columbia-Yukon border region, part of the northern mountain population of woodland caribou listed as a species of special concern under Canadian law.

"Canadian Wildlife Service, Yukon Government and independent scientists all agree that the impacts from this project would be devastating on the caribou," MacKinnon wrote. "Moose and grizzly bear populations will also suffer."

The lawsuit accuses the government of ignoring federal law by failing to implement protections for the caribou and of disregarding advice by independent as well as government scientists in granting a "politically motivated" approval for the project last year.