Gold and the Wild Outdoors are two ingredients that make placer mining so attractive

Placer mining in B.C.’s north is more a calling than a career. At least, so it would seem when talking with placer miner Randy Miller.

Miller has been actively placer mining since 1992, and recently stepped down as the president of the Atlin Placer Mining Association after 17 intermittent years leading the organization. His career as a placer miner was his second career, one he followed after he retired and decided to invest in tenure held by his wife near Atlin, B.C. He admits that becoming a placer miner isn’t strictly logical.

“We’re not exactly sure why people do this,” said Miller. “It’s like a calling: they enjoy what they’re doing but not everyone’s a winner. It’s something that people keep asking me—how can miners lose money and keep coming back? And it’s just the lure of the metal, I suppose.”

The lure of the metal is often enough to overcome the inconveniences and headaches of a shifting regulatory framework in which a placer miner operates. Miller said the industry is being heavily regulated to the point that the idealized notion of the independent placer miner operating in isolation and without outside pressures is far from the reality.

“Most miners have multiple claims to ensure that, should the property they are working may not be suitable, they can move to another property,” said Miller. “Most recently, the government has raised the rates to hold tenures, making them unaffordable for most miners. It has been explained that this would ensure that there would be more tenures available, therefore more folks entering the industry—(but) this does not seem to have happened thus far in the Atlin area.”

In Miller’s region, the Atlin Placer Miners Association is in communication with the Taku River Tlingit First Nation, which recently completed and signed a Land Use Plan with the B.C. Government.  One of the results of that signed agreement is the removal of more than 100,000 hectares that had previously been available for all types of mining, and placer mining in particular. Miller emphasized that the Taku River Tlingit First Nation have been excellent partners in the process, but he wondered if the government had the interests of operators in the North in mind when making decisions. He added that while protection of the wilderness was one of the primary goals of that action, he is concerned that there was no mention of protecting livelihoods.

It is the changing nature of the industry that has spurred Miller and the Atlin Placer Miners Association to work toward a best practices framework for the industry—a process that he said is close to completion and acceptance by the provincial government, and that he hopes will have a positive impact on the industry throughout B.C.

“Placer miners are adapting to new regimes, new controls, and new regulations in order to stay afloat—and we haven’t even discussed economics yet,” said Miller.

Like their hard-rock mining brethren, placer miners have been greatly affected by gold’s recent downward value. Because they are most often independent operators, there is very little margin when the cost of fuel increases and the price of gold falls. 

“Placer miners do not have the option of simply shutting down when the price of gold goes down as is the case for lode mining exploration and, to a lesser extent, lode mining,” explained Miller. “Placer miners are more like farmers: asset rich and cash poor. They don’t have the option to shut down as they have payments to make on equipment and other investments they made for the long term.”

The continued slide in value for gold will affect the industry by limiting exploration, said Miller, and may ultimately push miners out of the industry altogether—a challenge that he said his organization is also addressing. Like Miller, many placer miners take up the task as a second career, and he said it’s important to bring younger entrepreneurs into the field.

The challenges are many. So once again, the question needs to be asked: why are you in this game?

“The best time of the year is every spring when I return to the Atlin area,” said Miller. “Every year, I see all the miners back on the creek—it’s a fraternity of sorts and we all just enjoy each other’s company. I don’t know of any rivalry in the Atlin camp. Anybody will help anybody and you get a different attitude just driving up Highway 37. I do.

“It’s nice to recover gold but I’m not sure that’s how people look at it, to be honest. It’s a call to the North that you just enjoy.”