Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada Announces Award Winners for 2011

Prospector Shawn Ryan will receive the Bill Dennis Award for prospecting success, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) announced today. Ryan is one of six awards winners to be honoured at an awards evening on Monday, March 7, 2011, in Toronto during the association's annual international convention (March 6-9).

Ryan worked for close to 15 years to locate the source of the alluvial gold that sparked the Klondike gold rush more than a century ago. In 2004 he identified the anomaly that led Underworld Resources to its White Gold deposit and a subsequent $138-million takeover by Kinross Gold Corporation. Ryan's efforts and prospecting success have had a substantial impact on exploration in Yukon, stimulating renewed exploration interest and activity in the territory.

One of the discoverers of gold in the Klondike was Skookum Jim Mason. An award commemorating him is presented by the PDAC for aboriginal achievement in the mineral industry. The winner of the 2011 Skookum Jim Award is Jerry Asp who is being recognized for promoting mining's benefits to aboriginal communities in British Columbia. Asp established the Tahltan Nation Development Corporation to provide construction and maintenance services to northern BC mines and was responsible for negotiating two mining impact and benefits agreements in the province.

Vancouver-based Patricia Dillon, a former president of the PDAC and of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum, wins the 2011 distinguished service award. Dillon, who is a longtime employee of Teck, is being honoured for her many contributions to the association and to the Canadian mineral industry, especially to its education and human resources initiatives. She heads PDAC Mining Matters, a highly regarded educational program that reveals the wonders of earth sciences to youngsters and the importance of mining to their lives.

Dillon is the second woman to have led the association. The Viola R. MacMillan award is named for the first. The award recognizes leadership in management and financing for the exploration and development of mineral resources. This year's winner is Agnico-Eagle Mines Limited, a company that in 2006 launched an ambitious mine-building program to become one of the top ten gold producers in the world. The company has six operating gold mines in Canada, Finland and Mexico.

This year's environmental & social responsibility award will be presented to IAMGOLD Corporation for its commitment to excellence in environmental stewardship, community engagement, and health and safety, particularly during exploration. IAMGOLD has mines and exploration projects in West Africa, South America and Québec. The company was the top extractive company and third overall in the 2010 Globe and Mail's ranking of environmental, social and governance performance of Canada's largest companies that make up the S&P/TSX 60.

The PDAC's Thayer Lindsley Award honours the memory of one of Canada's greatest mine finders and is given for a recent significant mineral discovery anywhere in the world. An exploration team of Anglo American has been selected to receive this year's award. Team members Graham Brown, Vicente Irarrazaval, Juan Carlos Toro, Graeme Lyall, and William Robles are being recognized for their world-class discovery of Los Sulfatos copper-molybdenum deposit in Chile.