For immediate release                                                             Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Exploratory drilling for copper begins on Catface Mountain, Clayoquot Sound

— local Central Region Board not consulted

Tofino, BC – Selkirk Metals Corporation has begun exploratory drilling for copper on Catface Mountain, located 13 km north of Tofino, in the heart of the Clayoquot Sound Biosphere Reserve. Drilling began yesterday, after the BC Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources issued a drilling permit without obtaining approval from the Clayoquot Sound Central Region Board, as is required for all resource applications in Clayoquot Sound.

Selkirk’s exploratory drilling is designed to assess whether it would be economically feasible to develop the low-grade copper-molybdenum deposit on Catface Mountain into a huge open-pit mine. The potential mine would be one of the biggest industrial projects on Vancouver Island and would remove the top third of Catface Mountain, including its old growth forest. The mine would be located in the middle of the Clayoquot Sound UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, within sight of the tourist town of Tofino. In the late 1990s, Catface Mountain was the site of logging blockades in the ongoing fight to preserve the ancient temperate rainforest of Clayoquot Sound.

The exploratory drilling permit was not reviewed or approved by the local Clayoquot Sound Central Region Board (CRB), as it should have been. The CRB is a joint resource-use board established in 1994 under an Interim Measures Agreement between the Hereditary Chiefs of the Nuu-chah-nulth Central Region and the Province of British Columbia. It is composed of representatives from First Nations and other local communities and has the responsibility of reviewing and making recommendations regarding all land use applications and plans produced for Clayoquot Sound by any BC agency or ministry. The CRB is to ensure that the social, economic and environmental concerns of First Nations and local communities are addressed in decisions regarding development in Clayoquot Sound. All meetings of the CRB are open to the public.

“We call on Richard Neufeld, Minister of Energy, Mines, and Petroleum Resources and Gordon Hogg, Minister of State for Mining, to immediately rescind the exploratory drilling permit issued to Selkirk Metals for Catface Mountain”, stated Maryjka Mychajlowycz of Friends of Clayoquot Sound. “The application did not go through the due process established for Clayoquot and local communities were deprived of any say in the approval process. Given the hugely negative implications of a potential mine for Clayoquot Sound’s environment as well as its tourism economy, the least the B.C. government can do is to fully follow the approval procedure in considering Selkirk’s drilling application.”