"To offset Resolution Copper’s impacts on the hallowed ground of Oak Flat, the federal government will take possession of a rare old-growth mesquite forest. But it already approved exploratory drilling for another mine nearby."
"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."
Wyatt Myskow reports for Inside Climate News August 5, 2025.
Advertisement 
