"The cash-strapped company announced last year a plan to acquire mineral rights at a copper deposit within the original boundary of Grand Staircase-Escalante."

"A Canadian mining company has ditched its plans to extract copper, cobalt and other minerals from approximately 200 acres of land that the Trump administration carved out of the boundary protecting Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

Glacier Lake Resources Inc., a Vancouver-based copper and silver mining firm, announced in June that it had entered into an agreement to acquire the Colt Mesa deposit, as HuffPost first reported. The former mine site was part of the federally-protected site and off-limits to mining and other development until late last year when President Donald Trump dismantled a pair of national monuments in southern Utah.

The company’s president and CEO, Saf Dhillon, told HuffPost in an email Thursday that Glacier Lake “dropped that project a while back.”"

Chris D’Angelo reports for HuffPost February 1, 2019. [2]