Yukon hard rock mining, development and exploration overview 2019

Yukon mineral exploration activity dipped slightly in 2019. Exploration expenditures were approximately $105 million, compared to $120 million in 2018. Development expenditures are estimated at $240 million, primarily for the development of Victoria Gold Corp.’s Eagle mine ($183M), and, to a lesser extent the advancement of Newmont Goldcorp.’s Coffee gold project and the reopening of the Minto gold-copper-silver mine by Pembridge Resources. Production dollars are attributable to operations at Victoria Gold’s new Eagle mine and the newly reopened Minto mine of Pembridge Resources plc.

The number of active exploration projects dropped significantly from 155 projects in 2018 to 80 projects in 2019. To some degree, this reflects the continuing tight equity markets. Thirty-six of the 80 projects spent more than $1M, while 44 projects spent less than $500,000. The majority of smaller projects received Yukon Mineral Exploration Program (YMEP) grant funding. In terms of all Yukon projects, gold continues to be the most sought-after commodity, with 68% of the projects targeting it. The remainder of projects focused on exploring for lead-zinc, copper, silver, or nickel-PGEs, and to a lesser extent, tin, cobalt or vanadium.

Claim staking in 2019 was down significantly over the previous year to 2212 claims. The number of claims in good standing is 173,161, down from an all-time high of 252,902 in 2012. Drilling numbers were down slightly. Total drilling in 2019 was 221,596 m, compared to 246,282 m in 2018.

Datasets available for download

• Yukon Geological Survey publication metadataHTML
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• paperPDF
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• Original metadata (https://open.yukon.ca)HTML
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• Science and Technology
• ygs-import
• ygs-import-20250711
• ygs-publications
• yukon-geological-survey

Additional Info

• Maturity Level 1 (46%)
• Maturity Level 2 (38%)
• Maturity Level 3 (0%)
• Maturity Level 4 (0%)
• Maturity Level 5 (0%)
• Maturity Level 6 (0%)

Field	Value
Last Updated	October 20, 2025, 02:22 (UTC)
Created	October 20, 2025, 02:22 (UTC)
Domain / Topic Domain or topic of the dataset being cataloged.
Title Title for the Dataset.	Yukon hard rock mining, development and exploration overview 2019
Description A description of the dataset.	Yukon mineral exploration activity dipped slightly in 2019. Exploration expenditures were approximately $105 million, compared to $120 million in 2018. Development expenditures are estimated at $240 million, primarily for the development of Victoria Gold Corp.’s Eagle mine ($183M), and, to a lesser extent the advancement of Newmont Goldcorp.’s Coffee gold project and the reopening of the Minto gold-copper-silver mine by Pembridge Resources. Production dollars are attributable to operations at Victoria Gold’s new Eagle mine and the newly reopened Minto mine of Pembridge Resources plc. The number of active exploration projects dropped significantly from 155 projects in 2018 to 80 projects in 2019. To some degree, this reflects the continuing tight equity markets. Thirty-six of the 80 projects spent more than $1M, while 44 projects spent less than $500,000. The majority of smaller projects received Yukon Mineral Exploration Program (YMEP) grant funding. In terms of all Yukon projects, gold continues to be the most sought-after commodity, with 68% of the projects targeting it. The remainder of projects focused on exploring for lead-zinc, copper, silver, or nickel-PGEs, and to a lesser extent, tin, cobalt or vanadium. Claim staking in 2019 was down significantly over the previous year to 2212 claims. The number of claims in good standing is 173,161, down from an all-time high of 252,902 in 2012. Drilling numbers were down slightly. Total drilling in 2019 was 221,596 m, compared to 246,282 m in 2018.
Tags / Keywords Keywords/tags categorizing the dataset.	Science and Technology ygs-import ygs-import-20250711 ygs-publications yukon-geological-survey
Format (CSV, XLS, TXT, PDF, etc) File format of the dataset.
Dataset Size Dataset size in megabytes.
Metadata Identifier Metadata identifier – can be used as the unique identifier for catalogue entry
Published Date Published date of the dataset.	2020-01-17
Time Period Data Span (start date) Start date of the data in the dataset.
Time Period Data Span (end date) End date of time data in the dataset.
GeoSpatial Area Data Span A spatial region or named place the dataset covers.

Field	Value
Access category Type of access granted for the dataset (open, closed, service, etc).
License License used to access the dataset.	Open Government Licence - Yukon
Limits on use Limits on use of data.
Location Location of the dataset.	https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/47196b21-1b9f-47d7-9905-0c0daacfd15a
Data Service Data service for accessing a dataset.
Owner Owner of the dataset.	Government of Yukon | Gouvernement du Yukon
Contact Point Who to contact regarding access?	Yukon Geological Survey
Contact Point Email The email to contact regarding access?
Publisher Publisher of the dataset.
Publisher Email Email of the publisher.	[email protected]
Author Author of the dataset.
Author Email Email of the author.
Accessed At Date the data and metadata was accessed.

Field	Value
Identifier Unique identifier for the dataset.
Language Language(s) of the dataset
Link to dataset description A URL to an external document describing the dataset.
Persistent Identifier Data is identified by a persistent identifier.
Globally Unique Identifier Data is identified by a persistent and globally unique identifier.
Contains data about individuals Does the data hold data about individuals?
Contains data about identifiable individuals Does the data hold identifiable data about individual?
Contains Indigenous Data Does the data hold data about Indigenous communities?
Portal Type Platform type of the source portal.

Field	Value
Version Version of the datatset	None
Source Source of the dataset.	None
Version notes Version notes about the dataset.
Is version of another dataset Link to dataset that it is a version of.
Other versions Link to datasets that are versions of it.
Provenance Text Provenance Text of the data.
Provenance URL Provenance URL of the data.
Temporal resolution Describes how granular the date/time data in the dataset is.
GeoSpatial resolution in meters Describes how granular (in meters) geospatial data is in the dataset.
GeoSpatial resolution (in regions) Describes how granular (in regions) geospatial data is in the dataset.

Field	Value
Indigenous Community Permission Who holds the Indigenous Community Permission. Who to contact regarding access to a dataset that has data about Indigenous communities.
Community Permission Community permission (who gave permission).
The Indigenous communities the dataset is about Indigenous communities from which data is derived.

Field	Value
Number of data rows If tabular dataset, total number of rows.
Number of data columns If tabular dataset, total number of unique columns.
Number of data cells If tabular dataset, total number of cells with data.
Number of data relations If RDF dataset, total number of triples.
Number of entities If RDF dataset, total number of entities.
Number of data properties If RDF dataset, total number of unique properties used by the triples.
Data quality Describes the quality of the data in the dataset.
Metric for data quality A metric used to measure the quality of the data, such as missing values or invalid formats.

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