On March 28, 2000, Creekside Resources, which is situated in Mt. Currie and a development office with the Mt. Currie First Nations Band, released a number of draft reports to the Environmental Assessment Office (EAO).  Creekside Resources was contracted by the St'at'imc Nation (a confederacy of 11 First Nation peoples) to be in charge of conducting a number of studies regarding the St'at'imc's land, resources, history, and interests, for the EAO.  Because of a miscalculation, these reports were not first vetted by the St'at'imc Chiefs, Creekside's clients, before being sent to the EAO.  Subsequently, Chief Mike Leach of the Lillooet Nation, and St'at'imc representative for the ski development proposal, requested that the reports be returned.  The EAO refused to return the reports after they had been distributed to the other Cayoosh Resort Project Committee members and to the proponent, NGR Resort Consultants Inc.  Because of this, the St'at'imc Chiefs advised the EAO that they should treat all of the reports in confidence, i.e., they were not to be released to the public until advised otherwise, and any conclusions they would reach on any of the reports would be at their own risk.
"Mike Leach wrote to EAO, on behalf of St'at'imc Chiefs, indicating that the reports should be returned.  EAO considered that it had the right to organize a PC [Project Committee] review of the reports, while appreciating that the reports were drafts which had not been approved by the St'at'imc Chiefs, and that any use was at government's own risk." (Melvin Creek/Cayoosh Mountain Resort Project Committee meeting minutes, for April 12, 2000)
One of these studies was a report entitled, Review of Wildlife and Habitat Assessment For St'at'imc Impact Assessment Study of the Proposed Cayoosh Resort Development, by Ray Demarchi and Carol Hartwig, Ecodomain Consulting.  This study reviewed the wildlife reports by both the proponent, NGR Resort Consultants Inc. (owned by Al and Nancy Greene Raine) and the government's wildlife branch.  The interesting aspect of this report, which is highly critical of the data and methodology behind the wildlife reports, is that Demarchi was the former provincial Chief of Wildlife with the Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks.

On May 5, 2000, at a meeting with the Lillooet Tribal Council, SPEC obtained authorization to publish their wildlife report on this website.  On May 1, 2000, the Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks released a critique of the St'at'imc wildlife report to only the EAO's Project Committee members, a critique which, according to the Project Committee Chair Ray Crook (conversation, May 4), was withheld for a period of time from both the St'at'imc Chiefs and the public.

Click here to view the wildlife report.