In June, Yukon's Eagle gold mine saw what the territory's mines minister is calling a “catastrophic failure”: the release of hundreds of millions of litres of toxic cyanide solution into the environment. For many local residents, it's a wake-up call about the risks and costs of large-scale mining in the territory.

Steve Buyck walks a forest path framed by highbush cranberries, rosehips and Siberian Aster. Slung over his shoulder, a rifle. The bullet in the chamber is large enough to down a moose.

These days, however, hunting the animal doesn’t come so easily for him. Not far away from Buyck’s home, along the banks of the Stewart River in central Yukon, is the Eagle mine, the site of a “catastrophic” heap leach pad failure and cyanide spill in late June.

“Whatever I am eating in that area I am definitely going to have that in the back of my mind,” the citizen of the First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun said.