Surveyors for the mining company South32 were observed in early February staking unpatented mine claims in the Mesa subdivision area above Patagonia. According to a USDA website, “a mining claim is a selected parcel of federal land, valuable for a specific mineral deposit, for which you have asserted a right of possession under the General Mining Law.” According to Stu Evans, president of the Mesa Homeowners Assn., the surveyors did not ask for permission to drive into the subdivision.
Evans stated that one of the stakes is on an empty lot in the subdivision. He said that the owners had not granted permission for the survey on their land. When Evans called South32, he was told that the mining company does not comment on ongoing activities for mineral exploration. Greg Lucero, spokesman for South32, later stated that all stakes were placed on Forest Service land.
The process for claiming federal land is relatively simple. After staking the property bounds, the company registers the claim with the county and then must file a claim with the Bureau of Land Management. “The claim is only for mineral rights below the surface,” Lucero said. “We don’t even know if there are any minerals there to mine.” South32 holds unpatented claims on 23,000 acres at this point.
Lucero said that the mining company was “closing a gap in claims on the north side of Red Mountain” with this recent staking. “This will tie into the rest of our unpatented claims.” Their ‘mining neighbors’ in terms of unpatented claims in the area are Rio Tinto to the north and Teck to the east. The top of Red Mountain is privately owned. “We’re not contemplating a drilling program in the near future,” he said. “It’s more for protection. It won’t happen in our lifetime.”
A spokesman for the Patagonia Area Resource Alliance (PARA) feels that the staking in the subdivision once again demonstrates the need to revise the 1872 Mining Law. “The 1872 Mining Law is detrimentally outdated,” she wrote. “We are seeing a foreign corporation invade this ecosystem for purposes of mineral extraction under a law that gives the foreign corporation this country’s natural resource assets for free.”