OPINION: "I’ve raised my child around campfires and the croak of canyon tree frogs here. Everything about these mountains — the presence of ocelots, phosphorescent beetles, 20-foot-tall agave flower stalks
Excerpt from this Op-Ed from Tucson.com:
Several mountain peaks in the Santa Rita Mountains south of Tucson are scheduled to die. Canadian mining giant Hudbay Minerals is determined to decapitate them.
As a conservationist at the Center for Biological Diversity, I document and push back against destructive projects in defense of public lands and their rich array of wildlife. For more than a decade I’ve been visiting the Santa Ritas with a fever to get lost in, understand and protect this special place.
Several mountain peaks in the Santa Rita Mountains south of Tucson are scheduled to die. Canadian mining giant Hudbay Minerals is determined to decapitate them.
I’ve raised my child around campfires and the croak of canyon tree frogs here. Everything about these mountains — the presence of ocelots, phosphorescent beetles, 20-foot-tall agave flower stalks and an untold number of freshwater springs visited by bears and mountain lions — feels like a beautiful dream.
But copper is a harsh wake-up call.
Our modern, connected civilization demands tons of copper rolled into our internet lines, smartphones and electric-vehicle batteries. And while it’s possible to reduce demand for new copper by recycling — one report estimates it could cut demand by 55% — that process is limited by the lack of economic drivers and policies to encourage it.
Instead, mining companies get rubber stamps to rip more wealth out of the earth.
Large copper deposits sit beneath the Santa Rita Mountains, and Hudbay has been after them for years. A federal judge and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have dealt blows to the company’s proposed Rosemont Mine on the mountains’ eastern slope, ruling that Hudbay couldn’t dump waste rock and tailings on federal public land where it had no mining claims.
Now Hudbay is focusing on the Santa Ritas’ west side and ridgeline. Over the past several years, as its original mining project stalled because of fierce opposition from Arizona Tribes and environmental organizations, Hudbay started buying thousands of acres of state and private land.
