Mining
A strong focus of EcoFlight's work is flying over different mining operations in the Rocky Mountain West. Working closely with national and regional groups, we document the exponential growth in resource extraction that is operating near and sometimes in and under established wilderness and proposed wilderness areas.
Much of the western landscape we work to protect is impacted by the outdated 1872 Mining Law, which even today allows the mining industry to buy valuable mineral bearing public lands for the set 1872 price of no more than $5 per acre. The law was enacted to encourage settlement and development of publicly owned lands in the West. Unfortunately, nearly 150 years later, long after the West has been settled, this mining law is being used to trump all other uses of public lands, even if those lands are the West’s most special places, even if the mines pollute clean water and devastate wildlife habitat.
On every flight, EcoFlight captures images that are then distributed to press and our conservation partners. By giving the aerial perspective to environmental issues, EcoFlight's priority is to support grassroots and national conservation groups in their endeavors to protect the great ecosystems of the West.
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State: Alaska Region: southwest Alaska, near Lake Iliamna and Lake Clark Description: The proposed Alaska Pebble Mine project is an extremely large and controversial copper, gold, and molybdenum open-pit mine proposed for development within one of Alaska’s Crown Jewel watersheds draining into Bristol Bay in southwest Alaska. |
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State: Arizona Description: Arizona is ranked 5th among the 19 states with toxic emissions from the metal mining industry. Eighty-nine percent of the total reported toxic emissions in Arizona come from the mining industry, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Toxic Release Inventory. |
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State: Arizona Description: There are as many as 10,000 existing mining claims on BLM and U.S. Forest Service lands near the Grand Canyon for all types of hard-rock exploration. On January 9th 2012, Secretary of the Interior Salazar ordered a 20-year moratorium on thousands of new mining claims that threaten to industrialize watersheds, which drain directly into Grand Canyon and the Colorado River. |
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State: Colorado Region: Crested Butte Description: For more than 30 years, the small mountain town of Crested Butte has been battling the prospect of a large scale molybdenum mine in their area. View a short film about this mine by our friend Jeremy Rubingh at Snow Lion Productions. |
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State: Idaho Region: Airport - Owyhee, Oregon to near Boise, Idaho Description: The DeLamar Mine is an inactive open pit gold mine. The 2,014-acre site is currently undergoing reclamation. |
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State: Idaho Description: A proposed moybdenum mine threatens clean water in the Boise River headwaters. |
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State: Idaho Description: Thompson Creek Molybdenum Mine is Idaho's largest mine and is a serious concern for Idahoans who care for Salmon RIver country. |
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State: Idaho Region: Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem Description: The Blackfoot River valley is part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, home to hundreds of species of wildlife. The region has seen impacts from dozens of phosphate mines, around half of which are Superfund sites. Proper cleanup and halting of future development are essential. |
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State: Montana Description: The Berkeley Pit is a former open pit copper mine located in Butte, Montana. It is one mile long by half a mile wide and is filled to a depth of about 900 feet with heavily acidic water and dangerous heavy metals. The mine ceased operations in 1982 and has become one of the largest federal Superfund sites. |
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State: Nevada Region: Elko Nevada Description: Nevada is the third largest gold producer in the world after South Africa (first) and Australia (second). Current mining operations have disturbed more than 100,400 acres of land in Nevada. Some gold mining pits are so large that they can be seen from outer space. |
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State: New Mexico Region: near Las Cruces, New Mexico Description: Conservation groups have worked successfully to safeguard Otero Mesa from oil and gas development for over a decade, but there is a new and even more volatile threat to this wild desert grassland - hardrock mining. A 2010 USGS study indicates that the region contains deposits of rare earth minerals, used in the electronics, medical imaging, high tech and even green industries. |
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State: Texas Region: near El Paso, Texas Description: Just 60 miles south of Otero Mesa in Hudspeth County, Texas, a rare earth mine is already in the early stages of what will likely become a vast open-pit mine. |
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State: Utah Region: Salt Lake City, Oquirrh Mountains Description: Kennecott's Bingham Canyon Mine is situated directly east of the Great Salt Lake in Salt Lake City, Utah. The largest open pit mine in North America, Bingham has supplied more than 6 billion tons of rock yielding copper, gold, silver and molybdenum and not surprisingly, a tremendous amount of pollution. |
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State: Utah Region: West of Moab, Utah Description: The Moab or Cane Creek potash mine is located 20 miles west of Moab. The mine began underground excavation in 1964 and was converted in 1970 to a solar evaporation system. This mine produces between 700 and 1,000 tons of potash per day. Potash refers to potassium compounds which are found naturally occurring on areas where ancient oceans once covered the landscape. The main use for Potash is for agricultural fertilizer... |
