CALISTA LAND & NATURAL RESOURCES DEPARTMENT PRESENTS

LANDS IN FOCUS

AQUATIC MONITORING AT THE DONLIN GOLD PROJECT

Storyknife, July/Aug 2022 edition

John Ishnook, Donlin Gold Environmental Field Technician

It’s important to study fish, insects and other organisms in the aquatic environment during the entire life-cycle of a mining project.

Monitoring data collected in the permitting process goes into baseline studies that describe conditions before mining. Such studies were done at the Donlin Gold Project over a period of 10 years, from 2004 to 2014. Now that Donlin Gold has most of its major permits, the focus has shifted to long-term aquatic biomonitoring.

Donlin Gold’s Aquatic Resources Monitoring Plan went into effect in 2019 after review and approval by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. It requires comprehensive data collection at monitoring stations located at, below and above the proposed mine. This includes counting the number of returning adult salmon and their nests, counting and measuring the diversity of fish, insects, and other microorganism such as algae that cling to the rocks underwater, and measuring the metals in fish at monitoring stations located at, below and above the project. It also includes evaluating water quality, sediment, stream flow, and physical changes to the stream channel.

“This is all Alaska Native land that we are on, and I like to see that we are operating as cleanly as we can out here.”

– John Ishnook, Donlin Gold Environmental Field Technician

Three Alaska Native Donlin Gold employees participate in every aspect of the monitoring and are responsible for much of the data collection—Environmental Field Coordinator Dan Twitchell and environmental field technicians Gerald Beans and John Ishnook.

Ishnook recently drove two Calista Corporation staff to a water quality monitoring station along American Creek—within the core area of future mine operations—where he dipped the sensor end of a hand-held digital water quality meter in the creek and waited patiently while mosquitoes swarmed around him.

Ishnook joined the environmental team a year ago, after previously working as a bear guard and field technician. Ishnook is a Bering Straits Native Corporation Shareholder who grew up in St. Michael and is married to a Calista Shareholder.

He says, “This is all Alaska Native land that we are on, and I like to see that we are operating as cleanly as we can out here.”