Corporate Responsibility
Our Commitment
Bear Creek Mining Corporation is committed to conducting its mineral exploration and development activities in a professional manner consistent with internationally recognized guidelines and principles for Sustainable Development and Corporate Social Responsibility.
Community engagement and environmental stewardship are important cornerstones of this commitment, along with a duty to promote a safe and healthy working environment. The Company also has a responsibility to advance its projects to benefit shareholders, generate and sustain future growth, and contribute to the economic prosperity and social progress of the host nation of Peru.What is Sustainable Development?
Sustainable development is generally defined as "those actions and activities that minimize harm to the environment and improve the well-being of the community or the ability of the community to manage and sustain its own affairs, now and in the future, without depending on external sources for ongoing maintenance."
Simply put, it means responsible economic development that protects the environment and helps communities meet social needs in a sustainable manner.
What is Corporate Social Responsibility?
Responsible mining companies have adopted Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) guidelines governing their conduct at home and abroad. These guidelines call for companies to protect the environment, respect human rights, uphold ethical business practices and corporate governance systems, engage host communities and other stakeholders with openness and respect, contribute to community development and social progress, and protect the health and safety of workers and local populations.
Simply put, it means acting as a responsible citizen and good neighbor while pursuing business objectives compatible with social and environmental values.
Community Engagement
Bear Creek Mining has been active in Peru for more than a decade and is proud to be part of its vibrant mining community. An important objective of the Company's CSR and Sustainable Development Strategy is to build positive working
relationships with communities near our active projects and thereby gain a "social license" to operate. Toward this end, Bear Creek has hosted hundreds of public meetings designed to provide information about our projects and plans to local authorities and citizens. These meetings also helped the Company understand the customs, values and aspirations of local communities and address potential concerns as early as possible.Consultation - the first step to designing a project that integrates economic, social and environmental dimensions
- is no less essential as projects evolve over time. Through early dialogue continued over many years, Bear Creek has earned strong community support for its active projects. The Company is also committed to open and respectful consultation with other stakeholders interested in its activities.
Community Initiatives
Bear Creek Mining works in partnership with local communities to help diversify rural economies, deliver health-care and education services, improve infrastructure and raise standards of living. The Company invests in projects that are directly managed by citizens,
and which reflect their social and economic priorities as noted below.- Ranching and farming are the most important activities near the Company's high-altitude projects in Peru. Hundreds of families owning cattle, sheep, Alpacas and Vicunas are being provided direct support by veterinarians who administer vaccinations and develop herd-improvement programs.
- Health and Nutrition programs are priorities in areas where infant mortality rates and deaths resulting from extreme cold have been unacceptably high. Blankets and antibiotics for respiratory infections were provided and 4,000 people were screened by doctors who provided treatments when necessary.
- Education programs focused on supplying children with school supplies, books and computer skills training. The Company also promoted the operation of a pre-university institution (three youths entered regional universities in its first year) to help provide skilled personnel for projects in the future.
- Water Improvement Projects led to the installation of water sources and distribution systems that meet drinking water standards. Long-term goals include building local clinics and schools in areas near advanced projects.
Environmental Stewardship
Bear Creek Mining is committed to the highest environmental standards as part of its Sustainable Development Strategy. The process begins by exploring prospects with the smallest footprint possible using advanced exploration technologies and methods such as satellite imagery and deep-penetrating airborne geophysical surveys.
Once a project with economic potential has been identified, detailed studies are conducted to assess and document the state of the environment encompassing the project in great detail beginning at the earliest stages of exploration and continuing through the advanced exploration and development stages. These environmental baseline studies are the foundation of planning for any proposed mine. The data is also used to support the permitting process and environmental assessment reports, which examine potential environmental risks and how they can be prevented or otherwise minimized, mitigated or remediated.
Bear Creek Mining's advanced projects are based on designs that take into account the highest environmental safeguards and standards and industry best practices. They reflect extensive public consultation and are compliant with all legal requirements and Environmental and Social Impact Assessment Procedures in Peru.
Santa Ana Update: Setting The Record Straight
Bear Creek Mining is deeply saddened by the tragic events that occurred during an anti-development protest near the city of Juliaca in Puno State in late June, 2011. Dialogue and peaceful protests are part of the democratic process, but violence is never a solution to advance the legitimate goal of poverty reduction in Peru.
Leaders of the anti-development protests have made a series of assertions about Bear Creek's Santa Ana Silver Project that are false and inflammatory, notably that it would "contaminate" Lake Titicaca on the border of Peru and Bolivia. This is a misconception as Lake Titicaca is located within an entirely separate water-drainage basin than the Santa Ana Project. Furthermore, development of Santa Ana is based on a "zero-discharge," heap-leach project design, which means no discharge of water from the proposed mine into the surrounding environment. The project design incorporates high international standards of environmental safeguards.
Based on years of consultation, Santa Ana enjoys strong support from communities near the proposed mine. The Company conducted more than 130 information meetings between 2007 and 2011, including meetings with regional authorities and local communities culminating in an official ratification of the project at a formal public hearing in February 2011. District and community leaders favor its development, along with more than 4,000 citizens who attended a public rally to show support for the project.
Bear Creek Mining believes that Santa Ana exemplifies the type of environmentally sound mining project that Peru needs to help achieve its poverty reduction goals.
The Environmental and Social Impact Assessment for the project incorporates strong commitments to social sustainability and benefits to local communities, including job training, agricultural, educational and health improvement programs.
Santa Ana will provide 1,000 direct jobs, 1,500 indirect jobs, and more than $330 million in royalties and taxes for the Peruvian people and local communities.
Sampling Procedure
Surface samples - Bear Creek personnel collect all surface samples, including rock, soil and stream sediment samples. Respective samples are collected and immediately bagged, numbered and sealed. Sample bags are normally transported to Bear Creek's Lima office by Bear Creek
vehicles where ALS Chemex is called and picks up the samples for delivery to their laboratory for preparation and assay. On occasion the samples are shipped directly to ALS Chemex (Lima laboratory) by local bus transport. Drill samples - Rock cores are taken from the drill hole and put in boxes marked with hole number and depth information by the drill contractor. The core is washed, measured, marked for sample intervals and photographed. A geologist then logs the core by noting sample quality, rock type, alteration, veining, sulfide content and other pertinent information that may influence mineralization. Support staff then saw the core in half lengthwise or halves the core with a manual splitter and places half of the core for each marked sample interval in a bag labeled with the sample number, and the bag is sealed immediately. Sample bags are transported directly to ALS Chemex (Lima laboratory) by local bus transport or to Bear Creek's Lima office by Bear Creek vehicles where ALS Chemex is called and picks up the samples for delivery to their laboratory for preparation and assay.
Assay Procedure/Quality Control
Bear Creek has implemented a quality control program to ensure regulatory "best practices" in lithogeochemical sampling and analysis of drill and surface samples. All samples are shipped in security sealed bags to ALS Chemex Labs in Lima, Peru. ALS Chemex is an ISO 9001:2000-registered laboratory and is preparing for ISO 17025 certification.
Drill core and surface rock samples are dried and crushed to -10 mesh size (70 percent smaller than 2mm) then a 250 gram split is pulverized to - 200 mesh (85% smaller than 75 microns). Soil and stream sediment samples are dried and sieved to - 80 mesh. All procedures are completed at ALS Chemex's Lima laboratory
All samples are routinely assayed by conventional fire-assay methods for gold at the Lima lab and for 34 elements through digestion in an aqua regia acid solution followed by Inductively Coupled Plasma-Atomic Emission Spectroscopy ("ICP-AES") analysis.
Bear Creek has separately purchased its own standards, which are inserted "blind" to the lab in the sample sequence. Bear Creek knows the values that should be returned for these standard samples, but the lab does not, and the standards act as an outside test of the lab's accuracy of analysis. Field duplicates are also used in the QC program as precision checks at ALS Chemex located in Lima, Peru and Vancouver, BC.
NI 43-101 Disclosure
All of Bear Creek's exploration programs and pertinent disclosure of a technical or scientific nature are prepared by or prepared under the direct supervision of Marc Leduc, P. Eng., President and COO, Christian Rios, P.Geo, Member of AIPG, Exploration Manager and the President and CEO, Andrew Swarthout, P.Geo, CEO, who serve as the Qualified Persons under the definitions of NI 43-101. All diamond drilling has been performed using HQ diameter core with recoveries averaging greater than 95%. Core is logged and split on site under the supervision of Bear Creek geologists. Sampling is done on two-meter intervals and samples are transported by Company staff to Juliaca, Peru for direct shipping to ALS Chemex, Laboratories in Lima, Peru. ALS Chemex is an ISO 9001:2000-registered laboratory and is preparing for ISO 17025 certification. Silver, lead, and zinc assays utilize a multi-acid digestion with atomic absorption ("ore-grade assay method"). The QC/QA program includes the insertion every 20th sample of known standards prepared by SGS Laboratories, Lima.