Kinross Gold, a mining company, and Trout Unlimited, a non-profit focused on conservation, teamed up to create the Alaska Abandoned Mine Restoration Initiative to restore stream beds and support salmon spawning in Resurrection Creek near Hope.
Kinross reports that the first project of the partnership will support Phase II development, along with the U.S. Forest Service, of Resurrection Creek, which aims to rebuild the degraded stream channel and floodplains, constructing pools, side channels and ponds, installing logs and root-wads, and re-vegetating stream banks and riparian areas. Construction is expected to be completed in 2025.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski visited Resurrection Creek over the weekend to celebrate the collaborative restoration project:
Resurrection Creek was home to one of Alaska’s first gold rushes. After the first four decades of the 1900s, much of the soil was lost and stream channels and wetlands were changed after the mining, hydraulic and heavy equipment left. Mining and mine tailings turned the stream into a long, straight, deep ditch with steep sides and no connection to the flatter, wider historic floodplain, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
In 2007, the Forest Service finished restoring the Phase I area of the creek, just upstream of the Phase II area. Phase II aims to restore a 2.2-mile segment of Resurrection Creek and 74 acres of riparian habitat in the lower and more accessible reaches of the creek.
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