Mining claims near national parks soar

WASHINGTON – Miners are using a controversial 19th-century law to claim more public land around national parks like Yosemite, Grand Canyon and Death Valley.

Amid escalating demand for uranium, gold, copper and other metals, a new report shows the number of active mining claims grew 80 percent since January 2003. The rapid increase brings California’s active claims to 22,544, and swings a spotlight onto renewed efforts to change the 1872 law that governs Western mining.

“We’ve seen a modern-day land rush,” Dusty Horwitt, public lands analyst with the Environmental Working Group, said Thursday. “The big cause of concern is that the mining law provides very poor protection for our treasured places.”

Relatively few claims turn into active commercial mines. Even so, environmentalists grow particularly anxious when claims are staked near national parks. Within five miles of Yosemite, the new study shows, there are now 83 active claims.

The recent Yosemite-area claims include several dozen filed by a firm identified as the Troy Mining Corp. The company could not be reached Thursday.

All of the claims are filed under a law signed by President Ulysses S. Grant. Critics call the law dangerously outdated, and issued the report Thursday to highlight the need for reform. Miners and their political allies caution against moving too fast.

“We’re not opposed to reasonable changes in the mining law,” said Russ Fields, president of the Nevada Mining Association.

On Tuesday, Fields will testify at a House energy and minerals subcommittee hearing in Elko, Nev. The committee chairman, Rep. Jim Costa, D-Calif., promised a “productive debate on the need to bring a 135-year-old law into the 21st century.”

Under the current law, companies can stake a claim and mine federal land without paying royalties. Costa backs a bill that would impose an 8 percent federal royalty.

Fields called the proposed 8 percent royalty on gross proceeds “extraordinarily high,” and said it must take into account mining expenses. These expenses include new environmental requirements imposed in California and other states.

The current federal law also enables companies to “patent” – or buy – the land outright for as little as $5 an acre. A moratorium currently blocks these sales.