Bozeman nonprofit trying to purchase former mine site on Yellowstone NP’s northern border

A Bozeman-based nonprofit is trying to raise $6.25 million to purchase land and mineral rights — and prevent mining — on the northern boundary of Yellowstone National Park.

To date, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition has raised $3.9 million to purchase the mineral rights and mining claims involving 1,368 acres near Gardiner. In addition to acquiring the mining claim from Crevice Mining Group, LLC, the group intends to buy the deed to a 300-acre parcel of land, which it would then transfer to the Custer Gallatin National Forest.

According to a press release on the group’s plan, the mineral rights and land acquisition would “extinguish the last real and significant mining threat on the border of Yellowstone National Park, forever.”

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GYC said it has until Oct. 1, to raise the remaining $2.35 million to execute the deal.

Crevice Mountain is home to grizzly bears and serves as a migration corridor for elk, mule deer and bighorn sheep. It’s one of the few places outside the park where bison can roam without being subjected to culling efforts laid out in the Interagency Bison Management Plan.

GYC Philanthropy Director Melissa Richey described the proposal as “our generation’s best opportunity to protect what we love about Yellowstone National Park.”

For the better part of a decade, Park County communities have been especially concerned about mining proposals leading out of Gardiner and into Paradise Valley. In 2019, GYC worked with other groups, including the Yellowstone Gateway Business Coalition and Park County Environmental Council, to pass the Yellowstone Gateway Protection Act, which permanently protected about 30,000 acres of public land near Yellowstone from mining. In the 1990s, GYC worked to stop the New World gold mine that had been proposed for the Cooke City area.

Former Montana Environmental Information Center Executive Director Jim Jensen told Montana Free Press that he’s not aware of a similar effort to buy out a mining claim with private funds in the annals of Montana mining history. Jensen did note, however, that former president Bill Clinton executed a deal to buy Crown Butte’s interest in the New World Mine with public funds. That deal involved the transfer of other mineral-rich interests, including the eventual transfer of large tracts of coal-rich federal property in the Otter Creek region of southeastern Montana to the state.