Four articles today on the 1872 General Mining Law.

“The law, signed by President Grant, allows patents for hardrock minerals on public lands to be mined for $2.50 or $5 an acre.” It’s time to end mining industry welfare. By Joel Connelly. Seattle Post-Intelligencer Columnist.

“Uranium mines don’t belong next door to one of the seven wonders of the natural world. Yet a British mining company plans to drill exploratory holes on federal land within three miles of the Grand Canyon.” We know the Drill. Arizona Republic.

Coalition calls for new mining laws. By John Cramer of the Missoulian.

Company wants to reopen Elk City gold mining claim. Idaho Statesman. Elk City is deep in north central Idaho’s backcountry. Mining from the early years still poisons the streams.

 
About The Author

Ralph Maughan

Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan's Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of "Hiking Idaho." He also wrote "Beyond the Tetons" and "Backpacking Wyoming's Teton and Washakie Wilderness." He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.

One Response to It's time to end mining industry welfare

  1. Monty says:

    The energy “Holocaust” in the west is like killing mosquitos on the north slope of Alaska, kill a hundred & they are replaced by 10 thousand. Unfortunately, the majority of Americans believe that we can consume, breed & kill our way into an “earthly paradise”. To speak frankly of large-scale human destruction of the “natural world” that is a product of the pathology of unrestrained growth is an anathema to the majority of Americans who are contempuous towards ecological issues. And this fact is verified daily by listening to the “crap” that dominates the mainstream news media.

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‎"At some point we must draw a line across the ground of our home and our being, drive a spear into the land and say to the bulldozers, earthmovers, government and corporations, “thus far and no further.” If we do not, we shall later feel, instead of pride, the regret of Thoreau, that good but overly-bookish man, who wrote, near the end of his life, “If I repent of anything it is likely to be my good behaviour."

~ Edward Abbey

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