In Part One, we explained how a majority of the Bear Ears National Monument area
reopened to new mining claims
A decision taken by President Trump
and we went to stake one ourselves
For some insight I called up a professional miner at Energy Fuels
the company that operates the Daneros uranium mine
which is adjacent to the original monument boundaries.
In Utah, it's a $212 dollar paperwork and fieldwork process
where you call dibs to the valuable minerals in the ground
but the land is owned by the government
so you have to interface with them.
Filing a mining claim is step number one, out of about a million step process
and probably ten to twenty years to get a mine open.
So if this is the first step
out of many, how easy is it?
It's not that hard to file a mining claim
Pretty much any U.S. individual or company is allowed to do that
I am not an American citizen, but thankfully
companies have the same rights as individuals so NBC Left Field will be
staking this claim as I could legally not.
Well that's really up to you personally I want it to be as close to
the Daneros uranium mine as possible but within the original boundaries set
by President Obama and close to a road.
Start with your discovery monument where you think you've discovered your valuable mineral
I chose a wooden stake with some team merch but you can use the stone mound
that counts too
Then you stake your four corners and you have to measure out how
far you're walking and which cardinal direction you're walking.
I used a measured piece of jute twine which I bought at a hardware store
but there are probably more sophisticated tools out there
There are no markings out there
You're just in like this expanse of millions of acres
There's not a single straight natural line in Bears Ears and yet,
mining claims are governed by a very strict grid system
And if you are actually interested in prospecting on government land you need to listen closely
This map covers seven million acres of land in southeast Utah
And I'm looking to stake exactly 20
Each of these boxes
is called the township
This is a township
and then within this township
there are 36 sections
Within each section there are four quarters
within each quarter there is another quarter
and then it goes down and down until you hit tiny twenty acre parcels
simultaneously you must also figure out:
That land probably already had hundreds if not thousands of mining claims already filed on it
All existing active claims were grandfathered in when President Obama created the Bears Ears
National Monument.
When President Trump shrunk it a year later,
a lot of those claims would still be there. They would still hold.
They might not all be active but that's your job to figure out
Welcome to the LR2000
If you are still watching this nerdy tutorial, I have news for you.
If you really want to understand mining claims you are going to spend a very long time with this lovely
government database that basically holds all the records for all
activity happening in the public lands of America
and sadly I cannot be your expert on this
But the goal is to basically input this
little grid system into the database to see what other claims are in the area
Then to be extra sure you have to go to the local county recorders office which
in this case is in Monticello, Utah
Go into their database pull all the active
mining claims plot those out on a map as well so you're absolutely sure what's available
So you've got a mining claim. It doesn't give you a whole lot of rights.
Now you need to go explore it. Well you're gonna have to go get permits in order to really turn a spade of dirt
Ok so you're saying this could be an extended journalistic project?
Yes - very extended.
Truthfully I was so confused by this entire process I never even submitted my claim
So why would you do this? Why would you even stake land?
You wouldn't.
As we explained in Part One, even the activists who came out here to
stake land found out it doesn't protect anything.
There's nothing of value in the ground so you'll probably never convince the government to actually let
you open a mine
Even Energy Fuels supports a mining ban in the original
Bears Ears National Monument area
The thing to watch will be the mega lawsuits
that are brewing in Washington over Bears Ears
and the future of America's national monuments