Hi again Rainbow Peoples,

I regret having to post the following bad news, which will be of
particular concern to the southwestern US tribes.

After my visit to Death Valley National Park last weekend, while driving
home through Panamint Valley I was surprised to see, just 2 miles from
the park boundary, a huge new strip mine in Redlands Canyon (at Manly
Falls) with a large section of the mountainside scraped down to the
bedrock.  I later found the following information about this new gold
mining operation, called the Briggs Mine:

Since anything beyond superficial restoration will be too expensive
after the Briggs mine is played out in 8 years (unless planned
expansions are successful), its 60 million tons of displaced rock and
soil will become permanent new features of the landscape.  Anyone who
has seen the leach heaps and pits at Randsburg and Beatty already knows
what this means.

Canyon Resources, owners of the Briggs Mine, have apparently been
keeping it a politically low profile operation.  Even some of the locals
were caught off-guard: the nearby Timbisha Shoshone Indians attempted to
stop the mine on the grounds that they were not consulted as required by
Federal policy and various regulations.  After exhausting their legal
options, the tribe made a direct but unsuccessful appeal to Interior
Secretary Bruce Babbitt.

There may be more bad news in the near future: another mining company is
now preparing the site of the World Beater mine in Pleasant Canyon, a
few miles north of the Briggs Mine, near Ballerat.  This mine threatens
sensitive riparian vegetation at 6000' elevation.  The Shoshone are
charging the BLM and mining companies with using a "piecemealing"
process to start several new strip mines in the area.

Marty

P.S. More information about the Briggs Mine:

http://www.yvwiiusdinvnohii.net/~nlthomas/news/brgsmine.htm
http://www.ridgecrest.ca.us/~hallowel/kerncrest/chat/chat9704.htm
http://www.edgeinternet.com/dps/archives/dps00277.htm
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/971111/co_canyon_resources_1.html