Local students work to enhance abandoned mine safety The Idaho Gold Rush began in the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests in 1861. While gold mining continues in the forests, industrial-scale gold mining activity largely ceased by the 1940s. However, the legacy of gold mining, in the form of abandoned mines, can be found throughout the Forests. With hundreds of known mines scattered across more than 4 million acres, keeping track of all of the mine openings, tunnels, and tailing ponds is a difficult thing for the staff at the forests to systematically accomplish. This year, the Forests, with the help of two Geocorps interns, Madeleine Festin and Olivia Hoffman, began an initiative to learn what lies beneath the forests and the potential risks and hazards they pose to the public that enjoys the forests. They designed an easy to use digital tool that enables forest personnel to create standardized information about individual mines, their conditions, and the possible dangers they may pose. Madeleine Festin explained: “Abandoned mines are a major public safety hazard and we need to identify the risk to the public.” Olivia Hoffman concurred, “If you don’t know what’s out there, it can be an even greater danger; the people of Idaho love to roam freely on the forests and mine shafts can seriously impact your freedom to roam.” On July 10-12th, high school students working with the Clearwater Basin Youth Conservation Corps (CBYCC) went into the field to test out the tool. Braving 100 plus degree heat, downed trees, and swampy areas, they went to the onetime mining boomtown of Florence to use the new system on actual mines. And they found that it was intuitive and informative, which means future CBYCC cadres will put it to use to benefit the public! Minerals program manager, Katie Rhode, who is responsible for monitoring former mines, was excited by the results: “This monitoring system will allow us to systematically understand the abandoned mines on the forest and enhance the safety of forest visitors.”  Assessing a former mining site in the field.  Abandoned mine opening | COTTONWOOD
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