Use of soil amendments to increase reclamation success of a dry mine tailings site in the southern interior of BC

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Canadian companies are responsible for nearly half of mining activities worldwide, and mining operations are expanding in Canada; creating jobs and revenue for the country and providing necessary resources for society. The KGHM Ajax project is a proposed mine near Kamloops, BC that is in its operational and environmental planning phase. The provincial government has identified the protection of the environment as a key component of mineral exploration and mining. Towards this goal, the BC Mines Act includes legislation for mine closure. Ecological restoration is a developing field of science that is ideally positioned to provide the knowledge tools for successful recovery of disturbed lands due to the extraction of metals in the mining process. We propose a fully factorial experimental design on mine tailings to test the effect of plant species seed composition (natives and agronomics), a nurse plant (sage brush) and ash as a carbon supplement on the development of the soil and plant communities. The research will provide essential information for the restoration of an historic Afton tailings storage facility owned by KGHM International Ltd. The information will also be critical for future reclamation of mine tailings at other mines in the southern interior of BC.