From its headquarters in Washington, D.C., the National Mining Association predicted “a severe economic blow to mining states and communities,” while the industry’s political allies likened the move to declaring “war” on coal communities.

The truth is that coal has been steadily falling from its past dominance as energy king for nearly two decades. Domestic coal consumption dropped to 512 million tons in 2022, down 55 percent since its 2007 peak.

With the downward trajectory expected to continue, the Biden administration’s decision to end coal leasing in the Powder River Basin—the nation’s largest coal-producing region—reflects clear market trends. And far from killing coal, the administration’s plan allows mining to continue as the market transitions. 

Billions of tons of previously leased federal coal remain available for mining from 270 tracts across the nation, which combined cover an area larger than Rocky Mountain National Park. One Montana mine has enough coal to keep operating until 2060. Taken together, economic effects related to ending new coal leasing in the Powder River Basin may not be felt until the 2040s and beyond.

Coal companies are well aware that U.S. energy markets have rapidly changed, a fact they soberly tell investors: “Over the last few years, customers have shifted to long-term supply agreements with shorter durations, driven by the reduced utilization of (coal) plants and plant retirements, fluidity of natural gas pricing and the increased use of renewable energy sources,” Wyoming’s largest coal producer, Peabody Energy, disclosed in its 2023 financial filing.

Even with declining markets, the Biden administration did not come to the decision on its own. Arguing that BLM’s past reviews of coal’s contributions to climate change were inadequate, a coalition of environmental groups sued the government and won. That forced the agency to revisit whether more coal leasing was warranted.

“For decades, mining has affected public health, our local land, air, and water, and the global climate,” said Lynne Huskinson, a retired coal miner. She’s a member of the Powder River Basin Resource Council, a Wyoming landowners’ group that was among the plaintiffs.

Now, she said, “we look forward to BLM working with state and local partners to ensure a just economic transition for the Powder River Basin as we move toward a clean energy future.”

Huskinson lives in Gillette, Wyoming, where a dozen highly mechanized strip mines sprawl across the grasslands of the Powder River Basin. The Wyoming mines alone produce 40 percent of U.S. coal while employing less than 10 percent of the nation’s 44,000 coal workers.

The Basin’s mines have leased 8 billion tons of federal coal since the 1990s, a cheap and plentiful supply for the industry. The leasing process allows companies to nominate desired tracts, and then bid with little or no competition. Winning bidders often pay less than $1 a ton for coal, plus a nominal annual rent and a royalty after final sale.

There is little question that leasing helped launch and sustain the region’s energy boom. But in his 2022 decision, Judge Brian Morris of the Federal District Court of Montana cast his eye toward the future. Morris wrote that federal law required BLM to consider “long-term needs of future generations” that included “recreation, range, timber, minerals, watershed, wildlife and fish, and natural scenic, scientific, and historical values.”

The judge also gave the federal agency an out: “Coal mining represents a potentially allowable use of public lands, but BLM is not required to lease public lands.”

Morris’ words cleared the way for BLM to stop leasing, a decision that dovetails with a Colorado College poll that found most residents in eight Rocky Mountain states—including Wyoming and Montana—want Congress to prioritize conservation over energy development on public lands.

The legal wrangling will likely continue, with the BLM reviewing protests from the coal industry and its political allies that lay the groundwork for more lawsuits. For now, though, it seems the Biden administration’s decision to keep coal in the ground not only follows the market and the law, but public opinion, too.

Peter Gartrell is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a consultant in Washington, D.C., and covered coal leasing issues as a journalist and congressional staffer.

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Called the New World mine, it was proposed by the Canadian corporate giant Noranda, and it had a lot of momentum behind it. Yet the mine would have destroyed world-class trout fisheries and wild places for grizzlies and other wildlife in and around the nation’s first park.

Noranda planned to industrialize a rugged corner of the Beartooth Mountains of Montana and Wyoming with its underground mine, mill site and work camp, and 70-mile long, high voltage transmission line. An 80-acre lake of mine waste would have flooded a wetland, all this at the headwaters of three drainages in a landscape prone to avalanches, earthquakes and blizzards.

As Stu Coleman of Yellowstone National Park put it, “If you threw a dart at a map of the United States, you could not hit a worse place to put a mine.”

Still, the mine seemed a sure thing. No mine on public land had ever been stopped, thanks to the power of the Mining Law of 1872, passed the same year that Yellowstone Park was designated. It gives hard-rock mining priority over all other activities. Working back then for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, I recall being told that fighting Noranda was futile and perhaps dangerous.

What happened, though, felt like a miracle. A coalition of unlikely allies came together: anglers, hunters, ranchers, snowmobilers, park visitors, conservationists, scientists, artists and local businesses. All agreed that Yellowstone Park and the nearby wild country were more precious than gold. Together with officials from Yellowstone Park and the Interior Department, they created such a storm of opposition that President Bill Clinton finally intervened.

Looking back, what we did seems like textbook organizing, combining legal and media work supported by generous donors. It took a seven-year campaign until Noranda, beaten in court and bruised by negative public opinion, was eager for a way out.

Negotiations were complex, but on Aug. 12, 1996, President Clinton announced a deal that stopped the mine, bought out Noranda’s interest, retired its claims, and restored lands that had been heavily damaged by mining activity from decades earlier.

I remember feeling amazed when this David and Goliath battle ended. It would still take years for the government to purchase most of the mining claims, and almost two decades to restore the area’s toxic streams. 

At a celebration this year of the 25^th anniversary of Clinton’s announcement, veterans of the fight shared reminiscences, marveling again that we won. Some had gone on to lead other successful campaigns, including bringing back wolves to Yellowstone and protecting the Wyoming Range and Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front from oil and gas development.

All of these campaigns needed strong coalitions and luck to succeed. What did they have in common?

Locally, they shared a diverse and fired-up grassroots base. Then they were able to develop legal and communications strategies that reached out regionally, even nationally. And, because the battles dragged on, they required stamina, leadership, a high level of coordination — and, crucially, substantial funding.

What helped was that the battles centered on wild places or species whose iconic status generated wide support.

In more than 40 years of conservation advocacy, I have seen numerous campaigns fail. Advocates often misunderstood the complexity of what they faced or the need to adapt as circumstances changed. They lacked the skill and openness to sustain a broad-based coalition, ran out of money, or the political climate soured. Sometimes, champions abandoned the fight because the struggle just lasted so long. Success, I’m sorry to say, is hardly the norm.

Yet how wondrous it is when you save a place or restore a species. The New World site is not an industrial nightmare now.

Cutthroat trout swim again in upper Soda Butte Creek. Wildflowers abound in areas where tons of poisonous waste from earlier gold mining is now safely buried. A weasel has created a palace in a collapsed miner’s cabin, and grizzlies excavate whitebark pine seeds nearby that were cached by squirrels.

To me, the New World campaign was not just about stopping a mine. It was about a burning love for a special place that inspired us to keep working together to achieve a shared goal.

Louisa Willcox is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. She is co-founder of Grizzly Times, which works to protect habitat for grizzlies.

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In 1855, when my ancestors entered into a treaty with the United States, we ceded millions of acres in what eventually became Idaho, Oregon and Washington. In exchange we reserved an exclusive homeland and rights to fish, hunt, gather and pasture throughout our vast aboriginal territory.  

Then in 1860 gold was discovered, and thousands of prospectors flooded across our borders in violation of the treaty, damaging our sacred places and natural resources and causing unspeakable injury to our people.

The United States failed to uphold the terms of the 1855 Treaty and instead forced the Nez Perce to enter into a new treaty in 1863.  Known by us as the “steal treaty,” it reduced the size of our homeland by 90% and allowed miners and other non-Indians to remain on lands they had illegally occupied. 

When several Nez Perce bands led by Chief Joseph demanded that the United States uphold the promises it had made in the 1855 Treaty, and refused to move to the new reservation, the federal government resorted to military force, prompting the Nez Perce War of 1877.

A century and a half later, the promise of gold once again threatens our homeland and way of life. 

The Stibnite Gold Project is proposed by Perpetua Resources, formerly Midas Gold, a Canadian company that recently moved to Idaho. The mine site is located within Nez Perce ceded territory in the headwaters of the South Fork Salmon River, a watershed that once was home to one of the largest Chinook salmon runs in the Columbia River Basin.  We have treaty-reserved rights in this culturally significant area, and have worked over the years to restore fish habitat that benefits everyone, an effort that cost millions of dollars.

The Stibnite Gold Project would be one of the largest gold mines in the country.  The company aims to extract between four and five million ounces of gold from three open pit mines during the estimated 21- to 28-year life of the project.

Despite Perpetua’s claim that it will “restore the site” that is already heavily polluted by a legacy of mining, the proposal to expand the area and mine it again will add hundreds of millions of tons of additional mining waste and tailings. The proposal will also require storage of the new toxic waste, plus active water treatment long after the company is done mining the site.

Perpetua’s mining would also restrict or prohibit treaty-reserved access for more than two decades or even longer. It would also destroy critical habitat for endangered Chinook salmon and bull trout, and other resources cherished by the Nez Perce and all Idahoans.

The Nez Perce doubt that Perpetua Resources will stick around if the mine is permitted by the federal government.  Perpetua is now majority-owned by a New York-based corporation that recently replaced most of the mining company’s governing board. 

The company might opt to sell its shares for a huge profit and then exit the scene. A new corporation could then step in to extract gold, leaving behind a new legacy of toxic contamination and resource destruction that will plague our communities for generations to come. 

We know all too well the pattern of exploit-and-abandon. Corporations don’t keep their promises, and federal mining laws offer little or no accountability. We want this permit to mine gold denied.

The United States, as a signatory to the 1855 Treaty and trustee to the Tribe, has a responsibility to protect and honor our treaty rights and resources.  These treaty obligations, which predate the 1872 General Mining Law, are rooted in the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution and represent the solemn word of the United States. 

For us, the Nimíipuu, the value of the land, fish, wildlife and other natural resources will always be worth more than gold. Chief Joseph left us with these words that we will never forget: “It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and the broken promises.” 

The United States must not turn a blind eye to the Stibnite Gold project. We ask that this country honor Nez Perce treaty rights and protect the lands and resources important to all the people of Idaho.

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The answer is Bristol Bay’s wild salmon fishery, and it is no exaggeration to say it is the world’s most productive. Every year, some 40-60 million salmon return to the bay’s headwaters.

Yet in late July, the Army Corps of Engineers gave the proposed gold and silver Pebble Mine the go-ahead in its final environmental review. For the Trump administration, it’s been full speed ahead even though opposition continues to gain momentum.

More than 80 percent of Bristol Bay residents are against it. Prominent jewelers like Tiffany & Co., Ben Bridge and Zale’s have expressed their opposition to the Pebble Mine and vowed not to use any gold extracted from it. Even Donald Trump Jr. opposes the mine.

Commercial fisherman, churches, restaurants, seafood processors, hunters and anglers, Earthworks, the Wild Salmon Center and grocery-store companies all support protection of the Bristol Bay salmon fishery over large-scale mining. And nobody has been as steadfast in their opposition, or stands to lose as much, as the Native tribes who live around this magnificent bay.

“We are salmon people,” said Alannah Hurley, executive director of United Tribes of Bristol Bay, when she testified before a Congressional committee last year.  “But salmon are more than food for us. Salmon are central to our cultural identity, our spirituality and our sacred way of life that has made us who we are for thousands of years in the Bristol Bay region.”

In 2014, the Environmental Protection Agency completed a scientific assessment and proposed safety limits on disposing mine waste in Bristol Bay waters to ensure that salmon wouldn’t be harmed by mining. But in its evaluation of three possible scenarios, the EPA found that even the smallest mine would result in “unacceptable adverse effects.”

And what does “small” mean when talking about a massive open pit and tailings dam for storing 1.1 billion tons of mine waste? There would also be a 270-megawatt power plant, a 188-mile long natural gas pipeline that crosses Cook Inlet, an 82-mile transportation corridor, and a port on the Alaska coast. And it’s worth noting that Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., the Canadian company behind the mine, has promised its shareholders that Pebble will inevitably expand to its full size, thanks to subsequent permit expansions.

In any case, the Trump administration withdrew the proposed safety limits in 2019, and the mine has been fast-tracked through the environmental review process, led by the Army Corps of Engineers.

Yet state and federal experts have repeatedly critiqued the adequacy of the environmental review. The chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure recently called for a delay in the release of the Final Environmental Impact Statement due to the Corp’s failure to properly consult with tribes.

Then in late August, two major events: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reversed its July go-ahead and gave mine operators 90 days to explain how they would offset “unavoidable adverse impacts” to more than 3,200 acres of wetlands.  Reuters reports that the next day, shares in the company owning the mine fell by 25% as investors weighed in.  In addition, Alaska’s two Republican Senators came out against the mine. 

The final environmental review predicts a mind-boggling variety of impacts to the Bristol Bay watershed. One example: permanent damage to over 100 miles of rivers and streams and 2,000 acres of wetlands.  I can’t think of any other mine in North America—and perhaps the world—that would have such a devastating effect on clean water.

The Bristol Bay salmon fishery is a renewable resource; the legacy of the Pebble Mine promises perpetual pollution.

The ore will likely be shipped overseas to Asia, while the lasting impacts stay in Bristol Bay. In contrast, if the pristine water and wild salmon habitat of the watershed gain protection, the fishery can continue to feed our nation and power our economy forever.  

It’s hard to imagine a more irresponsible mining project than the Pebble Mine. The silver lining: There’s still time for Congress to act before a permit to mine is issued this fall, and for mine opponents to be heard, loud and clear. This mine must be stopped.

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