The KPMA was established in 1974 to promote and protect the interests of the placer mining industry and acts as a voice for all Yukon’s placer miners providing leadership on, and advocating for, responsible and sustainable placer mining with technological and ethical advances to the benefit of all operators, our environment, and enriching the communities we are a part of.

Our membership still includes many of our founding members, as well as their families. The placer industry is founded on family-operated businesses, with 90% of active operations being family run, and an average of 2.5 generations of family on each site. Incredibly, almost 80% of placer mines are owned or co-owned by women.

Yukon placer miners lead the world in environmentally responsible, safe, and efficient gold recovery, while making significant contributions to our economy. Miners consider themselves stewards of the land, actively working towards excellence in reclamation as part of their work. Placer mining uses only three things to extract gold from alluvial gravels: water, motion, and gravity. While miners do alter the landscape through the mining process, the current reclamation best practices ensure that the land we leave behind is ecologically productive and environmentally sustainable. Modern placer operators create post-mined landscapes with greater biodiversity through creating landscape diversity. Some of the photos on our website demonstrate the incredible wetland and upland complexes that have been created as a result of responsible placer mining.

The tenacity and hard work that drives us to find placer gold is matched by our passion to find better, more innovative ways to do things. We are Yukon placer miners – celebrating our past, working hard in the present for a sustainable and certain future.