B.C.’s backcountry is stitched with thousands of kilometres of rough and rutted forest service roads (FSR), mostly built by mining and forestry companies. Many are used by outdoor enthusiasts—hikers, hunters, ATVers—to get deeper into the backcountry.
But they are also used by prospectors, who are now facing additional barriers to conducting basic mineral exploration in the Arrow Lakes region south of Revelstoke.
Two forest service roads in the region—the Incomappleux and Rady Creek FSRs—are slated for deactivation.
Compounding the access problem for prospectors and junior miners is the creation of a new conservancy in the area that has become a no-staking zone.
The Incomappleux FSR was recently barricaded by the Ministry of Forests, and signs along Rady Creek FSR indicate deactivation is to start this month.
Last month, about 70 landowners, recreationists and mineral claims holders in the region were joined by the Public Land Use Society and Association of Mineral Exploration (AME) for a rally at the Incomappleux FSR to raise awareness and put pressure on the Ministry of Forests to back off on its road deactivation plans.
Meanwhile, a petition against the deactivation of the nearby Rady Creek FSR is now circulating online to keep the road open.
Restricting land access and property rights
A number of property owners in the Incomappleux Valley may lose access to their properties, says Warren Mirko, executive director of the Public Land Use Society.
“Government is going to strand property owners behind this (road) because they’re saying we don’t have the money to maintain the road,” Mirko said.
The AME has recently weighed in on the road closures, saying it is yet another move by the provincial government to put up barriers—literal physical barriers, in this case—to mineral exploration in B.C.
“It’s causing very significant anxiety and stress for quite a number of tenure holders,” said AME president and CEO Todd Stone.
“There’s tens of thousands of forest service roads around British Columbia. There should be some priority given to those roads that are in areas where we know there to be very high economic potential and mineral rich zones that are actively being explored.”
The region has no active mines, but many historical ones, and a number of active mineral claims.
It also has one significant early-stage development project—the Thor-Silver Cup polymetallic mine project, just northeast of the town of Trout Lake.
Taranis Resources has assembled a large land package—the Silver Cup District—with its Thor mine project being the hub. The deposits are primary silver and gold, with some zinc, lead and copper.
The impact of the Incomappleux Conservancy
While Taranis isn’t directly affected by the forest service road closures, company president John Gardiner said the closures, and the recent creation of a conservancy abutting the company’s Thor district, does have the effect of boxing them in.
“This is a mineral belt that has been known from the early 1900s and it’s about forty or fifty kilometres long,” Gardiner said. “It has hundreds of old mines in it—mostly silver, but they have a lot of critical minerals as well.”
In 2023, the 58,000-hectare Incomappleux Conservancy was created. It abuts the southern boundary of Glacier National Park, and has sterilized the area from industrial activities like logging and mineral exploration.
“What happened with the nature conservancy and the park is that it basically severed the belt in half and the northern half is no longer accessible,” Gardiner said.
The Thor project demonstrates that there’s potential for a mining renaissance in the region.
But identifying potentially minable deposits requires exploration, and prospectors with claims in the area now say the road closures will make it tougher to work their claims.
“It’s one of these dilemmas where the government says, if you have an existing mineral claim up there, you can still work on it, but then they cut off the access to it by saying you can’t use the roads,” Gardiner said.
“Normally we would be expanding our property up into the Incomappleux area and drilling it, but now we can’t because of the nature conservancy and the park.”
Value loss for grassroots explorers
Jack Denny is a prospector who will be directly affected by the closure and deactivation of the Rady Creek FSR. He uses the road to access his mineral claims, which he normally accesses by quad and then by foot.
If the Rady Creek FSR is decommissioned, he will lose access to two-thirds of his claim area, he said.
“For me, it devalues my claims,” he told me. “They’re doing this all over the province. They’re destroying our infrastructure.”
One frustration with the ministry’s road deactivation plans is that it appears to be happening without much consultation with local stakeholders.
“They just literally show up one day and are met by the forest service folks and they’re told that the road is shut down,” Stone said. “And shortly thereafter a gate gets put in place, effectively making it impassable for a four-by-four or any kind of vehicle.”
“There should be engagement and consultation ahead of time before you start shutting down roads.”
Government rationale and broad land restrictions
The Ministry of Forests said no one from the ministry was available to speak to the issue of FSR deactivation, but did release background information that suggests the road deactivations address public safety.
In the case of the Incomappleux FSR, those who have been using the road for the last several years have been doing so despite public notices that it has been closed to vehicle use for years.
“Because of ongoing safety concerns at the crevice bridge, the Incomappleux Forest Service Road (FSR) has been closed multiple times since 2005, gated in 2017, and formally closed by the Selkirk Resource District Manager on Oct. 5, 2021,” the ministry stated.
“The public continued to access the site after it was gated in 2021 with gating and barriers being damaged or removed. This has resulted in a need to install additional barriers.”
The ministry notes that a bridge along the road is exposed to “significant rockfall hazards.”
Improving the road’s safety and maintaining it would be costly, the ministry said. In 2023, the ministry estimated that repairing and replacing bridges would cost more than $6 million.
“Additionally, the rock fall hazard cannot be resolved, leaving significant public safety risks that would entail annual maintenance costs that was estimated to exceed $200,000 per year.”
But maintenance costs aren’t the only factor in deactivating the roads. The creation of the Incomappleux Conservancy means FSRs will no longer be needed for any future industrial activity, like logging.
In a backgrounder, the Forests Ministry notes: “The FSR’s and the tributary roads were planned for deactivation regardless of these recent developments, but the creation of the conservancy and the Part 13 designation ensure that there will be no further forestry activities in the valley.”
The new conservancy is part of the provincial government’s aim to protect 30 per cent of B.C.’s land and water—something the AME has been ringing alarm bells over.
When other forms of protections are included in what the B.C. government calls Other Effective Conservation Measures (OECM), the AME says 36 per cent of B.C. is already under some form of protection that restricts industrial activities.
Nelson Bennett’s column appears weekly at Resource Works News. Contact him at [email protected].
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