Royal Road Minerals Limited (CVE:RYR) is to collaborate with the Centro de Entendimiento con la Naturaleza (CEN) in Nicaragua in a bid to protect biodiversity.
The CEN is one of Nicaragua's largest and most well-regarded non-governmental organizations that, throughout its 33-year history, has developed successful practices in favor of conservation and the restoration of ecosystems.
"We believe that truly responsible exploration and mining can help relieve rural poverty and provide the educational and financial means for effective conservation and the restoration of ecosystems," said Jenny Arias, Royal Road's executive director for responsible development.
"We are excited by our agreement with the CEN and look forward to working with them on innovative solutions to the many problems facing communities and the environment in Nicaragua."
Under the terms of the deal, the CEN will provide socio-environmental advice and Royal Road will ensure best-practices and favorable conditions for the execution of jointly-developed socio-environmental strategies.
At the beginning of this month (March) Royal Road said it was to focus more heavily on the Los Andes project in Nicaragua after the explorer reported disappointing drill results from Piedra Imán, its other copper-gold project in the central American country.
The junior, along with local partner Hemco, drilled ten holes at Piedra Imán to try to confirm results reported by Noranda back in the 1970s which suggested significant widths of copper mineralisation were present at the project.
But Royal Road said its own drill program failed to confirm those intersections, and will focus its attention to drill testing the porphyry copper-gold target at Los Andes.
Royal Road shares in Toronto were unchanged at C$0.11 each.