The federal Bureau of Land Management wants to halt new mining claims on more than one million acres of California desert. The bureau will propose the temporary withdrawal of more than 1.3 million acres of state conservation lands from what the BLM said was, the “adverse impacts of mining.” The stoppage will take effect immediately until an evaluation in two years to decide if the ban will become permanent. The proposal would not prohibit ongoing or future mining on valid existing claims, only new claims. The proposal targets four areas, including 418,000 acres in the Amargosa Valley of Inyo and San Bernardino counties, the 95,000-acre Big Morongo area of San Bernardino County, the 590,000-acre Chuckwalla Bench/Dos Palmas area of Riverside County, and 236,000 acres in the eastern Sierras. The proposal is to be published Wednesday in the Federal Register and initiates the temporary ban on new claims. There will be a series of meetings to consider information from the public and others on the mineral potential of the affected areas, according to the BLM.
