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Bear Creek's Santa Ana Drilling Expands Silver Mineralization Beyond Current Resource; Positive Metallurgical Results

Posted on: Monday, 25 February 2008, 09:01 CST

VANCOUVER, Feb. 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Bear Creek Mining (TSX Venture: BCM) ("Bear Creek" or the "Company") is pleased to announce results of 13 additional diamond drill holes (2,398 meters), eight of which occur outside of the current resource boundaries (see press release dated 24 January 2008). Drilling at Santa Ana now totals 24,224 meters in 133 drill holes. Santa Ana is located 200 kilometers south of the Company's world-class Corani silver-base metal deposit in southeastern Peru. Highlights of this press release include:

- Drill hole SA-58A intersects 182m @ 42.3 g/t Ag, including 28m @ 89.0 g/t Ag and 6m @ 93.7g/t Ag. - Drill hole SA-62 intersects 112m @ 36.9 g/t Ag and 0.8% Zn, including 22m @ 95.8g/t Ag and 1.4% Zn. - Two clusters of drill holes extend silver mineralization 350m and 150m, to the southeast and east respectively, beyond previous resource limits. - Santa Ana remains open in all directions and drilling under thin soil cover continues to intersect and expand silver mineralization. - Results from key engineering and metallurgical studies continue to generate positive results

Andrew Swarthout, President and CEO of Bear Creek, states "The Santa Ana silver deposit continues to grow significantly, and patterns are emerging that may indicate a source for the mineralization which remains open despite having being drill tested over an area of 1.7 km by 750m. The size of the system continues to increase significantly and we may have tested a smaller percentage of the footprint than we previously thought. Engineering and metallurgical studies continue to indicate that the project will be very straight-forward to develop but completion of a scoping study is awaiting additional drilling to delineate the limits of the silver resource in order to produce a meaningful snap-shot of the project economics. The obvious opportunities for resource growth are outstanding and we are very pleased with everything we see in front of us on the development side. With Corani advancing towards pre-feasibility, Bear Creek now benefits from two, significant silver deposits."

New drilling results are as follow. All intercepts are down-hole lengths and true widths have not been calculated.

------------------------------------------------------------------------- Silver Drill Incli- Total Inter- (grams Hole Azimuth nation Depth From To val (m) per Lead Zinc # (degrees) (degrees) (m) (m) (m) DTH tonne) (%) (%) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SA-58A 90 -60 236.0 52 234 182 42.3 0.2 0.3 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- includes 94 100 6 93.7 0.1 0.2 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- and 142 170 28 89.0 0.4 0.5 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SA-59 300 -60 212.0 36 106 70 35.7 0.2 0.4 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 128 170 42 33.9 0.1 0.2 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SA-59A 120 -60 190.2 22 34 12 27.0 0.1 0.1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 68 78 10 25.2 0.3 0.7 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 98 100 2 380.0 0.3 0.6 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 120 126 6 47.0 0.3 0.7 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 138 154 16 31.4 0.2 0.4 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SA-60 270 -60 172.1 2 26 24 32.4 0.4 0.5 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 48 54 6 37.0 0.3 0.5 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 66 82 16 56.0 0.2 0.3 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SA-60A 90 -60 178.5 158 178(TD) 20 31.0 0.5 1.6 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SA-61 300 -60 197.3 52 74 22 27.9 0.2 0.3 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 130 197(TD) 67 34.5 0.6 0.8 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- includes 148 152 4 122.5 0.5 0.8 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- and 188 190 2 205.0 3.1 2.4 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SA-61A 120 -60 234.4 40 146 106 32.9 0.2 0.4 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- includes 120 126 6 116.7 0.6 1.2 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 188 234 46 - - 0.9 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SA-62 90 -70 148.9 26 138 112 36.9 0.5 0.8 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- includes 54 76 22 95.8 0.9 1.4 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SA-62A 270 -60 143.3 74 94 20 28.2 0.2 0.5 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SA-63 270 -80 164.3 64 88 24 17.1 0.1 0.5 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 130 154 24 - - 0.6 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SA-64 270 -80 170.3 68 110 42 58.4 0.9 1.1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 148 168 20 65.7 0.6 1.0 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- includes 36 168 132 - - 0.9 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SA-65 300 -60 192.8 3 42 39 42.0 0.2 0.5 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- includes 8 14 6 112.0 0.3 0.4 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 70 88 18 43.0 0.1 0.3 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 122 136 14 59.3 0.4 0.5 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SA-66 270 -80 158.1 8 14 6 109.7 0.8 0.4 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 56 118 62 29.2 0.4 0.9 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 28 130 102 - - 0.8 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Full drill results can be found at http://www.bearcreekmining.com/. To access the silver drill hole map directly please refer to http://www.bearcreekmining.com/i/pdf/FINAL_ Feb 22_08-Santa_Ana.pdf)

Expansion drilling- Blind, higher-grade silver bearing structures within a broad, lower-grade halo, typical of the Santa Ana mineralization style, were intersected in drill hole SA-58A opening up a new, mineralized structural zone located 150m to the east of the northern limit of the current resource. Also, new results from drill holes SA-59, 59A, 61 and 61A, when combined with results from holes SA-55A, 57 and 57A reported in late January, define two new structural corridors extending 350m to the southeast of the resource limit.

Internal drilling- One drill is dedicated to drilling five detailed fences within the current resource. While this aspect of the program is in early stages, the drill results are confirming continuity. Drilling is filling in the current model and increasing the confidence on continuity with the objective of converting material considered by the block model to be waste into mineralized material. This is expected to reduce the stripping ratio from the first resource estimate, and move mineralization from inferred to measured and indicated categories. Potentially very significant, drill hole SA-64 intersected 132 meters of 0.9% Zn. This interval, along with adjacent intervals of higher-grade zinc than is found in the project in general, is being investigated as a possible vector towards the source of mineralization at Santa Ana, as well as the possibility that the zinc mineralization may provide an additional economic parameter not yet considered for the project.

The program of grid rock-chip (subcrop) and soil sampling continues in areas of cover and a new cluster of anomalies with values of 100 g/t Ag in rocks and 24 g/t Ag in soils has been discovered 250 meters west of the current limit of the resource. These results support an earlier announced 90 g/t Ag rock anomaly located 150 meters to the north, solidifying a new untested target and opening potential beneath the entire 2 square kilometers of post-mineral tuff in the western part of the district. Grid sampling is also being extended an additional 600 meters south to include a drainage containing colonial era mine workings which remain untested.

Two drills continue on the property and an additional drill is being considered during the second quarter of 2008.

Santa Ana Engineering

Several studies have been completed by Vector Engineering to evaluate the infrastructure and heap leach construction issues at the site in preparation for a scoping study/PEA. The work demonstrates that the project has a very favorable heap leach site adjacent to the resource with ample capacity for future project growth. Importantly, adequate electrical power connected to the national grid is located within 42 km of the project. Other studies, including water supply and site access road designs, show that the project is well suited to straightforward project development. These elements will be incorporated into a PEA as soon as the silver resource size is defined by the expansion and in-fill drilling.

Metallurgical Testing

The column leach test program has been completed at McClelland Labs of Sparks Nevada and the results show that the Santa Ana material is well suited for heap leach recovery methods. In the test program, average silver recovery of 64.6% was achieved for the conventional column tests. McClelland Labs estimates that in a conventional, commercial heap leach situation, the overall long-term silver recovery should exceed 70%. Additionally, one of the tests used a pulp-agglomeration heap leach method for silver recovery and it showed an overall silver recovery of 76.7%. In the pulp-agglomeration test, a higher grade portion of the ore was ground and then leached in an agitation vessel for 48 hours. The solid residue from the agitation leach was then combined with crushed lower grade material and then placed in a column where a standard column leach test was performed.

The Company is very pleased with the column test results and will be continuing to test the Santa Ana material to improve the project economics. The primary focus of the metallurgical optimization tests will be to establish the most economic crush size for the heap leach. The recent tests utilized a nominal 3/4 inch crush size and further testing will be performed to see if coarser crush sizes yield similar silver recovery in order to optimize project economics.

Additionally, the Company will begin investigating process recovery options for the zinc and lead found within portions the Santa Ana silver deposit. In the recent resource calculation (see Press Release January 24, 2008), in addition to the large silver resource, the project contains 246 million pounds of zinc (29.8 Mt @ 0.53% Zn) in the Indicated category and 456 million pounds of zinc (61.0 Mt @ 0.49% Zn) in the Inferred category. The drilling indicates that there may be several large discrete higher-grade zinc pods that potentially lend themselves to selective mining. This distribution of the zinc may enhance the economics of treating base metals as an "add-on" opportunity without affecting the favorable silver recovery of a planned low-cost, heap leach silver mine.

In other news, Bear Creek has evaluated the results of drilling from its Don Marcelo gold prospect located in northern Peru. While wide-spread, anomalous gold was confirmed in an epithermal system, the results did not meet the objectives of the Company, and the agreement has been terminated.

The TSX Venture Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. For further information, please visit the Company's website (http://www.bearcreekmining.com/) Regulatory footnotes:

All of Bear Creek's exploration programs and pertinent disclosure of a technical or scientific nature are prepared by or prepared under the direct supervision of David Volkert, P.Geo., Bear Creek's Vice President of Exploration and/or Marc Leduc, P. Eng., Vice President of Technical Services and the President and CEO, Andrew Swarthout, P.Geo., who serve as the Qualified Persons under the definitions of NI 43-101. All diamond drilling has been performed using HQ diameter core with recoveries averaging greater than 95%. Core is logged and split on site under the supervision of Bear Creek geologists. Sampling is done on two-meter intervals and samples are transported by Company staff to Juliaca, Peru for direct shipping to ALS Chemex, Laboratories in Lima, Peru. ALS Chemex is an ISO 9001:2000-registered laboratory and is preparing for ISO 17025 certification. Silver, lead, and zinc assays utilize a multi-acid digestion with atomic absorption ("ore-grade assay method"). The QC/QA program includes the insertion every 20th sample of known standards prepared by SGS Laboratories, Lima. A section in Bear Creek's website is dedicated to sampling, assay and quality control procedures.

Certain disclosure in this release, including management's assessment of Bear Creek's plans and projects, constitutes forward-looking statements that are subject to numerous risks, uncertainties and other factors relating to Bear Creek's operation as a mineral exploration company that may cause future results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements. (x)Any reference to the potential quantity & grade of mineralization at Corani is conceptual in nature, there has been insufficient exploration to define a mineral resource on the property and it is uncertain if further exploration will result in discovery of a mineral resource on the property. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Bear Creek expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

CONTACT: Andrew Swarthout - President and CEO, or Patrick De Witt - Investor Relations, Phone: (604) 685-6269, Direct: (604) 628-1111, E-mail: info@bearcreekmining.com

Bear Creek Mining Corporation

CONTACT: Andrew Swarthout - President and CEO, or Patrick De Witt -Investor Relations, Phone: (604) 685-6269, Direct: (604) 628-1111, E-mail:info@bearcreekmining.com

Source: PRNewswire-FirstCall

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