Cedar Breaks National Monument, Utah (Mike Painter)
June 9, 2025
Dear CalUWild Friends & Supporters—
Summer is just about here, meaning that many people will get away to visit and explore the wide variety of public lands we are blessed with here in the U.S. Unfortunately, those lands are under attack, on a scale we’ve never seen before. This is not mere alarmist language, either; the current administration and many in Congress seem opposed to the very concept of national public lands, seeing them only as a line item on the national balance sheet. We need all Americans, the vast majority of whom support public lands, to speak out forcefully in their defense.
A few summers ago, when there wasn’t as much needing our attention, we published a Summer Reading Issue, with no Action Items and just a collection of things to read. This summer, however, there are several issues requiring attention along with plenty of other items to read as well. It may look a bit overwhelming, but fortunately there’s no need to read them all at once.
So have a good summer, and we’ll keep you posted on developments as they occur. And as always, thanks for your interest and support.
Best wishes,
Mike Painter, Coordinator
IN UTAH
1. Red Rocks Bill Cosponsor Update
(ACTION ITEM)
IN CALIFORNIA
2. Conglomerate Mesa Gold Exploration
Draft Environmental Impact Statement
Open for Public Comment
DEADLINE: June 16, 2025
(ACTION ITEM)
IN WASHINGTON, DC
3. Important Updates
(ACTION ITEM)
IN THE PRESS & ELSEWHERE
4. Links to Articles and Other Items of Interest
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IN UTAH
1. Red Rock Bill Cosponsor Update
(ACTION ITEM)
Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-51) is the latest California House member to sign on as a cosponsor of America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act, H.R.2467. If you live in her district, please call her Washington, DC office to say thank you.
202-225-2040
She joins nine other California House members as cosponsors, and a full listing of their names and DC office phone numbers may be found on CalUWild’s website here.
We also hope that Sen Adam Schiff will sign on to S.1193, the companion bill in the Senate. Please call his office to make that request.
202-224-3841
There are currently 48 cosponsors in the House and 16 in the Senate. For a full list of cosponsors nationwide, click here.
IN CALIFORNIA
2. Conglomerate Mesa Gold Exploration
Draft Environmental Impact Statement
Open for Public Comment
EADLINE: June 16, 2025
(ACTION ITEM)
We’ve written quite a few times over many years about proposals to explore for gold on Conglomerate Mesa, located above the eastern shore of (Dry) Owens Lake. It’s an area of great cultural significance to many local Tribes as well as being an important ecosystem in its own right. The Mesa is an important elevated area where many Joshua trees grow, and it may become an even more important habitat for them as the climate warms and makes it more difficult for them to thrive at lower elevations. It’s also the home of the Inyo rock daisy, listed by California Fish & Game Commission as a threatened species. And the landscape itself is dramatic, adjacent to Death Valley National Park and the Cerro Gordo Peak Wilderness Area
Mojave Precious Metals, a subsidiary of K2 Gold, a Canadian company, submitted an application to do exploratory drilling for gold, and the BLM required the preparation of a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). A Draft (DEIS) has been released, and the BLM is soliciting comments on the DEIS through June 16. (Apologies for the short deadline.)
Please submit a comment that asks the BLM to choose the No Action Alternative, Alternative D. If you’ve ever visited the area or hope to, mention that, too. And as always, if using the talking points below, please use your own words.
Here are some general talking points from our coalition partners at Friends of the Inyo. The project:
— would impact public backcountry roads and nearby recreational access, specifically Saline Valley Road and White Mountain Talc Road, which are used to access Cerro Gordo.
— could destroy countless Joshua Trees, a species protected under California law.
— requires miles of new roads carved into pristine high desert.
— could consume between 2.9 and 22 million gallons of water—in a desert with none.
— threatens Paiute–Shoshone cultural sites.
This is a foreign company using a loophole to mine U.S. resources royalty-free.
I’m also including the following detailed talking points that were prepared by our friends at CalWild (formerly the California Wilderness Coalition). They refer to more technical issues with the DEIS and give you some idea of what kind of thinking needs to go into the preparation of an EIS. Feel free to pick and choose from among them in addition to any more general personal comments you might wish to make.
Things that are wrong with the proposed project proposal
The project fails to:
— adequately prioritize the protection of Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACECs) in this region, as mandated by the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976.
— adequately analyze the potential impacts to the nationally significant scientific, ecological, and cultural values of the California Desert National Conservation that overlap with the proposed project boundary.
— adequately protect the Lands with Wilderness Characteristics within the proposed project boundary, especially the potential impacts to the naturalness of these lands.
— comply with the Desert Renewable Energy and Conservation Plan’s protections for vegetation in the Conglomerate Mesa area, including Western Joshua trees and the rare and endemic Inyo rock daisy. It also fails to adequately analyze the impacts from the proposed roadbuilding on these imperiled plants.
— analyze reasonably foreseeable adverse environmental effects of the proposed project, especially effects from drill sumps, on wildlife such as Nelson’s bighorn desert sheep and Inyo mule deer, at least 5 species of bats, Le Conte’s Thrasher, and northern sagebrush lizard.
— adequately analyze the surface disturbance impacts (e.g., fugitive dust, erosion, and introduction of non-native plant species) that would be caused by road building and repetitive driving of large vehicles with equipment up and down the mesa.
Finally, the project proposal states that Tribal consultation is on-going but fails to mention any evidence that tribal input has been meaningfully incorporated into the agency’s environmental analysis or the shaping of project alternatives. The BLM must engage in meaningful consultation with the Tribes with cultural ties to the Conglomerate Mesa region, including the Timbisha Shoshone and other Paiute-Shoshone peoples.
Alternatives that the BLM should have considered but did not
BLM should consider and analyze an alternative:
— that only allows 60 exploration drill holes instead of 120.
— that only allows drill holes to about half the depth to protect groundwater resources (i.e., 450 feet instead of 984 feet).
— an alternative that calls for reduced work hours (i.e., no operations between sunset and sunrise).
— that excludes drill sites in the “Dragonfly”. Since all of the Dragonfly area drill sites are in an Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC), this would allow BLM to balance the perceived need for mineral exploration with the prioritization of protecting ACECs that the Federal Land Policy and Management Act mandates BLM do.
— that requires the project proponent to use potable water trucks in order to better protect the plants and wildlife from potential toxins.
Finally, BLM should consider and analyze the use of settling tanks instead of sump pits, which would allow the proponent to recycle the water and thus use less water.
Comments may be submitted online at:
https://eplanning.blm.gov/eplanning-ui/project/2022050/570
(click on either Participate Now button)
If you’re interested, the DEIS documents can also be downloaded there.
or by email to:
Or by U.S. Mail to:
Mojave Exploration Drilling Project EIS
c/o BLM Ridgecrest Field Office
300 S. Richmond Road
Ridgecrest, CA 93555
For more information on Conglomerate Mesa, please visit the coalition website.
Related
Brent Underwood, who owns the nearby ghost town of Cerro Gordo, recently published an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee opposing the project: The fight to save California public land from a Canadian mining company.
Filmmaker Chris Kam just released Hole in the Mountain: Saving Conglomerate Mesa, a 30-mnute film looking at the controversy. You can watch it on YouTube. I’m not including the full link here, because we’ve found that the Update gets trapped in many readers’ SPAM filters when YouTube links are included. You can find it by appending /watch?v=J62-xA48UX4 to the YouTube homepage URL or by doing a search on YouTube for Conglomerate Mesa.
IN WASHINGTON, DC
3. Important Updates
The Administration
Disruption continues to be the order of the day. Federal employees continue to be laid off and rehired. Funding for agencies and grants to research institutions are being drastically cut, if not eliminated outright. Despite the fact that courts are consistently ruling against these cuts and ordering them restored in many cases, the long-term damage to our agencies and structure of government will be significant.
The White House continues its string of questionable nominations, as described in this article in the New York Times. (The headline is a bit misleading, as it refers to an Undersecretary in the Department of Agriculture, not the Chief of the Forest Service.) He Built an Airstrip on Protected Land. Now He’s in Line to Lead the Forest Service. (gift link for non-subscribers).
Related
An article in the Los Angeles Times: If you want to understand Trump’s environmental policy, read Project 2025 (may be behind paywall)
An article in The Guardian: Turmoil, resignations and ‘psychological warfare’: how Trump is crippling US national parks
An op-ed in The Guardian by Jon Jarvis and Gary Machlis: Trump is laying the groundwork to privatize America’s national parks
At the end of March, the White House issued Executive Order 14253: Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, directing the Secretary of the Interior
to review public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties within the Department of the Interior’s (Department) jurisdiction and to restore Federal sites dedicated to history, including parks and museums, to solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing.
(This executive order also launched an attack on the Smithsonian Institution, which is actually independent of the Executive Branch.)
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum issued a secretarial order (SO 3431) with the same name. It states:
[E]ach land management Bureau shall conduct a review of all public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties on lands within its jurisdiction to identify whether any such properties contain images, descriptions, depictions, messages, narratives or other information (content) that inappropriately disparages Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times), or, with respect to content describing natural features, that emphasizes matters unrelated to the beauty, abundance, or grandeur of said natural feature.
Further on it states:
Each land management Bureau shall post signage throughout each property, in as many locations within each property as necessary and appropriate to ensure public awareness, to allow for public input as to the state of the property, its management, and its compliance with this Order. Each such sign shall include a QR code that links to a website managed by the land management Bureau, allowing the user to provide a written entry.
Public Domain published a lengthy analysis of the order and other secretarial issues: Trump’s Interior Chief Rewrites History Of National Monuments As He Prepares Cuts
Related
An article in the Los Angeles Times: Interior secretary gives DOGE member with oil-industry ties power to remake department (for subscribers only, no gift link available)
The Department of Interior has just released its Draft Strategic Plan for 2026-2030. While it contains many of the general policy statements that were included in a draft leaked to Public Domain (mentioned above) in April, language regarding “right-sizing” monuments, releasing public lands for housing or “returning” lands and sites to states has disappeared. There was a huge public backlash to the leaked version, so maybe it was successful in forcing these modifications.
At this point, even a minor improvement counts as a victory.
Congress
(ACTION ITEM)
As you likely know, the House recently passed its version of the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill.” It contains many terrible provisions, affecting many areas of concern. But one thing it does not currently contain is any public lands sell-off provisions. That was not guaranteed, however. The House Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on the bill, and toward midnight, after the meeting had gone on for most of the day and without any advance warning to anyone, Rep. Celeste Maloy (R-UT) and Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV) introduced an amendment providing for the sale of 11,000 acres of BLM-managed land in Utah and 500,000 acres in Nevada.
The ostensible purpose of the land sales was to ease the “affordable housing crisis” in the country, yet there was no language in the bill requiring that purpose. Worse, the proceeds from the sales were to go the general U.S. Treasury, not to fund other acquisition by the Interior Department, as has happened with previous land sales. Despite that, the GOP-controlled committee voted to approve the amendment and the bill as a whole.
To the rescue, surprisingly, came former Interior Secretary and current Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT), who stated publicly that he would oppose an overall budget bill that contained any public land sell-offs. He said that any land disposal must be done via a transparent public process, and he lined up his Montana House and Senate colleagues in support of that position.
Rep. Amodei, who represents the Reno area, claimed the amendment was introduced with the approval of the county commissioners of Clark County, Nevada, where Las Vegas is located. The commissioners, however, stated that they were never consulted, and they objected to the amendment, as did the local congresswoman. More than 70 conservation groups (CalUWild among them) sent a letter to House and Natural Resources Committee leadership opposing the amendment. The amendment was removed from the bill after some negotiation among the various representatives.
Unfortunately, that’s the end of the story only in the House. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), chairman of the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee, has stated he will introduce an amendment in the Senate version of the bill with land sell-off provisions. He said he is working on something with Montana Sen. Steve Daines (R), who was earlier opposed to any sale at all. Sen. Lee has said any proposal won’t be anywhere near the size in the House version, but so far no one has seen any language concerning the issue. Regardless, there will be strong opposition to any sell-offs in the Senate version.
The underhanded way this amendment was introduced and the misstatements as to its purpose and language are unfortunately representative of what we see happening in Washington these days. We all need to be hyper-vigilant and prepared to speak up as needed.
Related
An op-ed in High Country News by former BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning, now president of The Wilderness Society: Our public lands must not be sold
A study by Headwater Economics: Housing on public lands will be limited by wildfire risk and development challenges
The budget bill also rolls back provision of the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA), a law that this president himself signed just five years ago, by gutting the Land & Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). In 2020, Congress finally made full annual funding ($900 million) of the LWCF permanent. The program is funded by royalties from offshore oil and gas extraction (not taxpayers) that are used to buy lands and support preservation and recreation programs across the country. The bill would divert funding to non-LWCF uses such as deferred maintenance (which was specifically rejected when the GAOA was passed). It also eliminates funding for outdoor recreation/sportsmen’s access to National Forests, National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, and BLM lands. Finally it contains large cuts to state and local assistance programs that support outdoor recreation in every state and must be allocated annually out of LWCF’s dedicated funding.
The bill also contains restrictions on the process for public comment participation under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and imposes limits on judicial review of agency decisions.
Please call Sens. Padilla and Schiff to oppose the Budget Bill for these reasons (and many others).
Sen. Padilla: 202-224-3553
Sen. Schiff: 202-224-3841
On Wednesday, June 11, the Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources will hold a hearing on the White House budget request for Fiscal Year 2026. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum will be testifying. The hearing will begin at 10 a.m. EDT and will be broadcast live on the Committee’s website.
IN THE PRESS & ELSEWHERE
4. Links to Articles and Other Items of Interest
If a link is broken or otherwise inaccessible, please send me an email, and I’ll fix it or send you a PDF copy. Gift links are temporary links from some websites, allowing non-subscribers to view articles for free for a limited time. As always, inclusion of an item in this section does not imply agreement with the viewpoint expressed.
In Utah
An article in AZCentral: What will happen to Bears Ears monument under Trump? Tribes fear loss of sacred spaces
In California
An article in the Palm Springs Desert Sun: Lawsuit seeks to eliminate new Chuckwalla National Monument
An article in the San Francisco Chronicle: California’s Klamath River opens for visitors after nation’s largest dam removal project (gift link for non-subscribers)
Another article in the San Francisco Chronicle: Huge swath of Northern California to be preserved amid largest-ever land transfer to tribe (gift link for non-subscribers)
An article in The Guardian: Meet the seed collector restoring California’s landscapes – one tiny plant at a time
Also in The Guardian: The hidden underwater eden of ‘California’s Galapagos’, where seals and grizzly bear-sized bass reign
The California Department of Fish & Wildlife announced recently that there are now ten wolf packs in the state. And an article in the Los Angeles Times: Killing wolves remains a crime in California. But a rebellion is brewing (for subscribers only, no gift link available)
In Arizona
An article from the Associated Press: The Supreme Court rejects a plea to block a copper mine on land in Arizona that’s sacred to Apaches
In New Mexico
An op-ed in the Santa Fe New Mexican, by Charles Reilly, the governor of the Pueblo of Acoma: The promise to Chaco Canyon must be kept
In General
An article in The Conversation: Why protecting wildland is crucial to American freedom and identity
A column in the Los Angeles Times by Sammy Roth, who writes the weekly Boiling Point newsletter: Pope Francis was a climate hero. Trump’s reign gives his words extra meaning
Support CalUWild!
Membership is free, but your support is both needed and appreciated. Dues are not tax-deductible, as they may be used for lobbying activities. There are several ways to contribute:
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and is not selling any goods or services.)
– Zelle (interbank transfers) account: info [at] caluwild [dot] org, Michael Painter (account administrator)
– By check payable to: CalUWild
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