Trump Administration Promotes Unauthorized Mining in Mojave National Preserve

BAKER, CA – The Trump administration is promoting speculative mining development inside one of America’s national parks, sparking backlash from advocates.

In a press release issued on Monday, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) bizarrely cited approval of a mine within the Mojave National Preserve, despite the Bureau lacking any jurisdiction, as the lands are managed by the National Park Service. The promotion of this Australian mining company comes in response to the National Park Service defending the Preserve and fining the company over $200,000 for ecosystem damages from unauthorized operations.

The BLM’s press release cites “rare earth minerals,” despite the company never undergoing any sort of validity verification for these minerals.

“Mojave National Preserve is a national park, and the Trump administration is blatantly ignoring its protected status,” said Chance Wilcox, NPCA’s California Desert Program Manager. The Bureau of Land Management can’t authorize this foreign owned mine in a national park. This makes no sense any way you read it.”

“The National Park Service has clearly documented that this Australian-owned mine is responsible for hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages to Mojave and is conducting speculative mining without authorization,” said Wilcox. “The Trump administration’s misguided effort to give an Australian mine a free pass to our national park system, while saddling American taxpayers with the clean-up costs, is an outright betrayal of our parks.”

Dateline Resources Ltd, Colosseum’s parent company, is an Australian corporation that purchased the mine in 2021. Colosseum was originally authorized under a 1985 Plan of Operations, approved by the Bureau of Land Management. This was prior to the California Desert Protection Act in 1994, which established Mojave National Preserve as a unit of the National Park System, increasing protections for the Mojave landscape. The Preserve’s Clark Mountain region, the location of Colosseum Mine, has the second-highest concentration of rare plants in California and an important desert bighorn sheep habitat.

In addition to not undergoing a validity examination for rare earth minerals at this site, Dateline Resources has not submitted a plan of operations that the National Park Service must approve prior to mining activities being allowed in national parks.

“The mining company continues to operate on an expired plan of operations approved by an agency that no longer has jurisdiction over these Mojave National Preserve lands,” said Wilcox. “Now, the Trump administration is blatantly ignoring process and commonsense in encouraging mining in one of America’s largest national parks. This action puts us on a path towards destruction of America’s treasured landscapes and weakening the integrity of the Park Service in favor of the possibility of critical minerals.”

# # #

About the National Parks Conservation Association: Since 1919, the nonpartisan National Parks Conservation Association has been the leading voice in safeguarding our national parks. NPCA and its more than 1.6 million members and supporters work together to protect and preserve our nation’s most iconic and inspirational places for future generations. For more information, visit www.npca.org