Copper Mines Close in on Western Apache Sacred Site, and the Forest Protected to Mitigate The Damage – Inside Climate News

MAMMOTH, Ariz.—On the banks of the San Pedro River lies one of the American Southwest’s few remaining old-growth mesquite bosques—a streamside forest in more than 3,000 acres of riparian ecosystem that is one of Arizona’s last intact landscapes.

Known as the 7B Ranch, the mesquite forest is vital to the area’s biodiversity. It is the centerpiece of a land exchange between Resolution Copper and the federal government that paves the way for the company to dig a massive copper mine roughly 60 miles north that will lead to the destruction of a site sacred to the Western Apache. The San Carlos Apache Tribe has been fighting for years against the proposed Resolution Copper mine and is actively engaged in litigation over it with the federal government. The Trump administration has signaled it will approve the mine once pending litigation over the case is resolved. 

But despite the ranch’s importance in offsetting the impacts of the Resolution Copper project, just eight miles up the road is another proposed mine, this one pursued by Faraday Copper, for which the Bureau of Land Management has approved exploratory drilling. Now, the San Carlos Apache Tribe and a coalition of environmental groups appealed to the BLM’s Arizona state director to review the agency’s approval of Faraday’s Copper Creek project, citing its impacts to 7B Ranch as a property mitigating the impacts of a mine elsewhere, and for the “serious risks to wildlife, water resources, landscape connectivity, human health, and cultural resources” it poses to the tribe, land and other local communities. 

“One of the things that’s supposed to offset the tragic loss of Oak Flat is this 7B Ranch,” said Russ McSpadden, a Southwest conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, which is involved in fighting both the Copper Creek and Resolution Copper projects. “But it looks like its destiny is potentially to be impacted by another mine, which would really make its value moot in the land exchange.”

As Feds Prioritize Mining, Opponents Say Environmental and Cultural Concerns Are Ignored 

Throughout the region surrounding Mammoth and Superior, the respective towns that would be impacted by the Faraday Copper and Resolution Copper projects, companies are looking to mine the mountains for copper and critical minerals, which are essential for transmitting electricity, creating batteries for electric vehicles, storing renewable energy and national defense. Under both the Biden and Trump administrations, boosting domestic mineral production has been a top priority. 

Executive orders from President Donald Trump have tasked agencies with prioritizing mineral production on federal lands and fast-tracking mines, which opponents say will likely impact sacred Indigenous sites, national monuments and water resources. Few places are likely to be as impacted as Arizona, where mining has long been one of the biggest economic drivers, but has also wrought environmental damage and damaged the health of locals. Many residents fear the new wave of mining will bring the same problems. 

In the federal government’s rush to approve new mines, environmentalists, tribal leaders and residents of affected Arizona communities worry their concerns and the cumulative impacts to the region from multiple mines are being ignored. A case in point, they say, is the push to approve both the Resolution Copper mine that could protect 7B Ranch and the Copper Creek project that could devastate it. 

The BLM state director, Raymond Suazo, in a letter dated July 31—just two days after the groups sent their appeal—denied their request. The coalition’s next step—to get a review of the BLM’s approval of Faraday’s Copper Creek project and its impacts on 7B Ranch—is with a request to the Interior Department’s Board of Land Appeals.

Melissa Crytzer Fry, a Mammoth local who has dedicated the past few years to raising awareness about the proposed mine there, including as chair of the Lower San Pedro Watershed Alliance, an all-volunteer conservation group, said Suazo’s letter is a “blatant dismissal of public and tribal concerns” and that appealing to the Board of Land Appeals seems to be the next logical step for the group as “the BLM needs to be held accountable.”

At the end of June, the BLM approved Faraday’s plan to explore approximately 1,324 of the public acres for copper for up to three years near Mammoth. The company will be able to construct 67 drill sites, each of which will use around 70,000 gallons of water a month, to test the viability of mining for copper in the area.

Angela Johnson, Faraday’s vice president of corporate development and sustainability, said in a statement that the company views “the decision by the BLM as a thorough and considerate evaluation of our proposed exploration activities and stand by the conclusions of their Environmental Analysis. Our door remains open for constructive discussion with stakeholders.”

Two weeks before the BLM approved the company’s Copper Creek exploration plans, the U.S. Forest Service posted the final environmental impact statement and draft record of decision for the proposed Resolution Copper project, setting the stage for the sacred site of Oak Flat to be transferred to the mining company by Aug. 19, which was mandated by Congress in a rider attached to a 2014 defense bill requiring the land be exchanged. 

Resolution Copper declined to comment. The BLM did not respond to a request for comment. The Department of Agriculture, which oversees the USFS, declined to comment. 

“When BLM proposes to permit exploratory drilling, if it does what it’s intended to do, it would ultimately lead to a massive open pit mine in a significant part of the watershed of the San Pedro River,” said McSpadden, at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s clear to us that the risks are just incredible. Every time a new major source of water use like that enters the San Pedro River Valley, it’s just one more cut to that system, one more stab that could one day cease water flows.”

Threats to Arizona’s Most Biodiverse and Culturally Important Landscapes 

The San Pedro River flows northward across 143 miles of northern Mexico and southern Arizona, creating one of the Southwest’s last ecologically intact valleys. 

Arizona’s second most intact landscape behind Grand Canyon National Park, it contains more native vertebrate species than Yellowstone. A day’s walk can traverse the Sonoran desert floor, weave through a canyon carved by a stream fed by ancient groundwater and filled with endangered fish and wander through mixed-conifer forests characteristic of mountain ranges far further north. For millennia, the valley was home to scores of Indigenous communities, and tribes continue to have a presence in the area. 

Somehow, the valley has remained largely intact, untouched by modern development, despite largely lacking stringent environmental protections.

When developers in Arizona destroy habitat for major projects, this is often the place they protect to offset those impacts. 

In 2004, Resolution Copper did exactly that. The mining company, a subsidiary of two of the world’s largest mining companies, Rio Tinto and BHP, acquired the 7B ranch with plans to trade it for the Oak Flat land it hoped to mine. Eventually, Congress would pave the way for the deal when the late Arizona Sen. John McCain and former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake attached a last-minute rider to 2014’s defense bill that required Oak Flat to be transferred from the Forest Service to Resolution Copper. The transfer launched one of the country’s most controversial and high-profile environmental fights, with the San Carlos Apache Tribe and environmentalists continuing to fight to stop the transfer and save the sacred land.

Since time immemorial, Western Apache have gathered at Oak Flat, which they call Chi’chil Biłdagoteel, for sacred ceremonies that cannot be held anywhere else, as tribal beliefs are inextricably tied to the land. The tribe believes the landscape located outside present-day Superior, Arizona, is a direct corridor to the Creator, where Gaan—called spirit dancers in English, and akin to angels—reside. 

Since the 1950s, Oak Flat has been under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Forest Service and listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Legislators for years pushed to have the land made available for mining via a land transfer in which a company offers up environmentally important land it owns in exchange for areas better suited for extraction but unavailable for development. 

Beneath the ground at the site of Oak Flat lies one of the world’s largest untapped copper deposits. Utilizing “block cave mining,” the company will access low-grade ore by undermining the surface of the land so it collapses under its own weight to reveal the copper. Eventually, the proposed mine would create an open pit 1.8 miles wide and 1,000 feet deep, big enough to hold the Eiffel Tower and nearly as large as the local town, according to environmental review documents for the project.

“The Hardest Time This Area Has Ever Seen Ecologically”

At the 7B Ranch, a 1.5-mile nature trail cuts through the old-growth mesquite forest, the dark arms of the trees shading the desert floor and creating a birder’s paradise. The orange private property postings outside the forest featuring the name of Resolution Copper provide the only notice that the property is a property set aside to offset the impacts of a mine elsewhere. 

Soon, the property may finally be conveyed to the federal government, depending on the outcome of litigation, one case brought by both the San Carlos Apache Tribe and another by a coalition of conservation groups. A hearing for those cases is scheduled for Aug. 6. 

Those same groups are concerned over the impacts the Copper Creek project poses to 7B Ranch, another area that is culturally important for the tribe and cherished among Arizona landscapes. Additionally, they see the Copper Creek project’s potential impacts to the area as inherently contradictory with the federal government’s accepting the land from Resolution Copper to offset the impacts of its mine. 

The initial draft environment assessment by the BLM for the Copper Creek project made no mention of the nearby mitigation property or the potential of Faraday’s mine to affect it. Local environmental groups pointed that out, and it was noted in the final assessment, though they found the drilling would not impact the site. 

“The [project’s environmental assessment], however, downplays and summarily dismisses impacts from both expanded exploration and the reasonably foreseeable future action of full-scale mining,” the tribe and conservation groups wrote in their letter to the BLM state director. “It does not take into consideration water withdrawals resulting from exploration and future mining activities at Copper Creek—a hydrological sub-basin of the lower San Pedro watershed—and the negative impacts of such activity to the 7B mitigation property’s ecological vitality and final appraisal value.” The EA also doesn’t analyze how the project will affect the 1 to 4 million migratory birds that traverse the region each year.

The letter also raises concerns over the project’s impact to the San Pedro River’s water and the BLM omission of data regarding its potential water impacts. The agency’s final EA also failed to mention or analyze impacts to the endangered Mexican spotted owl, the letter says, and did not engage in legally required consultation with the San Carlos Apache Tribe or take into consideration the tribe’s concerns about the cultural properties in the area.

“This is going to be the hardest time this area has ever seen ecologically,” said Crytzer Fry, with the Lower San Pedro Watershed Alliance. “If you have a mine for 30 years and it provides jobs, that’s fantastic. But what happens after that 30 years if everyone’s wells have gone dry? Then you have three ghost towns for what was the equivalent of 30 years worth of jobs.”

In a separate letter, the Lower San Pedro Watershed Alliance noted Faraday began widening roads before the project was approved, and that the BLM ignored the group’s reports and failed to hold an in-person public meeting about the project. 

Near the Copper Creek project are the communities of Mammoth, San Manuel and Oracle, and a now closed copper mine where numerous locals worked. Before the current decades-long drought settled into the Southwest, the San Pedro River flowed nearly year-round through the area, and now many locals are concerned about the project’s water impacts. 

But they feel their concerns over the project have been ignored. U.S. mining laws, which are up to 150 years old, and a new executive order from President Trump, make mining the top use for mineral-rich public lands, and nearby communities ultimately don’t dictate if a mine is approved or not. 

“I feel like [BLM is] just trying to check a box: ‘we have to have so many meetings,’” said Roxanne Garcia, a Mammoth resident who worries about the proposed project deteriorating water quality, private wells and access to the outdoors. “But they’re going to do what they want anyway.”

Jerry Bribiescas, a local who worked at some now-closed mines in the area and was formerly on Mammoth’s town council, said he hadn’t heard about the BLM’s recent approval until a reporter told him, despite being on the mailing list for updates on the project. But he doubts the Copper Creek project will ever become a mine, as companies have been drilling in the area since the 1960s and never found enough pockets of copper to justify digging for it. 

And even if a project does, he said, the region doesn’t have the water to support it and other water-intensive projects like a data center project proposed near Tucson. “Everybody wants all these projects that are coming into southern Arizona,” he said. “But that’s a lot of water, and right now we’re in a dry spell.”