Sarah Gilman

Assistant Editor

Many Western towns were once home to a vibrant mining culture of “men with boots on,” as High Country News Editor Jonathan Thompson wrote in a recent editorial. That is, until wild fluctuations in metal prices, increased federal regulation, and ample opportunities abroad drove a number of big mining companies out of their Western strongholds. But with the rise of China and India boosting demand, metal prices are again sky-high and mining in the West, as reported in a recent High Country News package, is on its way back — for better or worse.

Now, another subset of “men with boots on” (and likely more than a few booted women) — hunters and anglers, some of the West’s longest active conservationists — is hoping that the impacts (bootprints?) of that resurgence on public lands and wildlife will be better controlled by the federal government than during booms of the past. About 400 sportsmen’s groups, led by the National Wildlife Federation, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and Trout Unlimited under the umbrella of Sportsmen United for Sensible Mining, are calling for Congress to get moving on (longstanding) efforts to reform the antiquated 1872 mining law.

“There’s a willingness on both sides to get it done,” says Jim Lyon, senior vice president of conservation for the National Wildlife Federation. “You look at the stars aligning and say: This is possible.”

Last fall, the House passed a law that would protect more public land from mineral exploration, give land managers more discretion to say “no” to mining in sensitive areas, create a fund to help with cleanups, end patenting of federal lands into private ownership, and draw royalty payments from new and old mines alike. A (less stringent) senate version is expected “any day now,” Lyon said.

The sportsmen’s coalition released a report Tuesday detailing the impacts of hardrock mining on prime hunting grounds and fishing streams in 13 Western states. Leaking tailings impoundments, cyanide spills, spoiled fisheries, and inadequate funds for cleanup are common themes.

If the law had been reformed earlier, a number of the poisoned places detailed in the report’s case studies would have been cleaned up or spared impacts to begin with, says Steve Moyer, government affairs director for Trout Unlimited. A tailings impoundment blowout at the abandoned Mike Horse mine that killed everything in a 10-mile stretch of the famed Blackfoot River in Montana, for example, could have been prevented, he says. And the Hecla mine (started in 1994) near the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness in Idaho, which was plagued by cyanide spills and other problems from the start, would have had to keep a tighter operation.

For more information and to see what former Forest Service Chief Mike Dombek, Audubon editor at large Ted Williams, and sportsman T.V. personality Tony Dean have to say on the subject, visit http://www.sensiblemining.org/.