December 22, 2005

Stop Pombo’s mining land grab

By Pepper Trail
Ashland

In 1872, the population of the United States was about 40 million people and the West was still a wide-open frontier. In that year, a law was passed to encourage mining in the western territories. It’s hard to believe, but the General Mining Law of 1872 still governs federal mining policy today. Among other provisions, it allows mining claims on public lands to be sold (“patented”) to individuals or corporations for $5/acre or less.

In 1994, Congress imposed a moratorium on such mining claim purchases, in recognition that the terms of the 1872 law were outrageously obsolete. The moratorium has been renewed every year since, but all efforts to write a new federal mining law in line with present-day realities have been blocked by the mining lobby.

All that changed a few weeks ago. Richard Pombo, a fierce property-rights advocate and chairman of the House Resources Committee, succeeded in inserting a series of mining amendments into the House budget bill. These provisions, adopted without public review or debate, would open millions of acres of America’s federal public lands to corporate and private ownership.

Locally, the Forest Service estimates that there are about 580 active mining claims in place on the Siskiyou National Forest, covering about 11,600 acres. These include such well-known areas as the botanically unique Rough-and-Ready Creek, which would be open to destruction by the proposed Nicore mine if Pombo’s amendments stand.

Nationwide, BLM estimates the amount of land that could be sold off at 15-20 million acres. Citing the vague language of the Pombo amendments, many environmental groups believe that the total land at risk could be hundreds of millions of acres.

Fortunately, the Senate version of the budget bill does not contain Pombo’s mining language. It is now up to the Senate, including Oregon’s Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith, to insure that these terrible proposals are kept off the House-Senate reconciliation bill. We must insist that our irreplaceable public lands — the birthright of every American — are not sold out to private interests in a backroom deal brokered by Richard Pombo.

Pepper Trail is a conservation biologist and conservation chair of the Rogue Valley Audubon Society. He lives in Ashland.