Take Action: Coho stronghold and Endangered Wildflower Habitat Slated for Mining

Take Action:  Coho stronghold and Endangered Wildflower Habitat Slated for Mining.

The BLM has a long history of promoting mining on public lands over all other resource values, including at-risk fish populations and rare wildflowers.

Even on the most sensitive and ecologically important public lands, the BLM frequently authorizes destructive mining activities that will degrade irreplaceable watersheds and wildlife.

Currently the Medford BLM District is in the process of authorizing placer (strip) mining activities in lands designated as "riparian reserves" in the Sucker Creek "key watershed" for at-risk Coho Salmon and in lands designated as the French Flat "Area of Critical Environmental Concern" to protect rare endemic wildflowers.

These are lands that belong to all Americans, and that are supposedly protected to pass along our public lands heritage to future generations. Taxpayers have footed the bill for years of restoration work in Coho Critical Habitat in the Sucker Creek watershed that will be undone by mining to profit one individual. One of the most botanically important rare-wildflower hotspots in the world will be excavated to enrich a miner who will pay no royalties on the minerals he extracts from public lands.

Please click here to take a moment to ask the BLM to change course and manage your lands in a more balanced manner.