"Fate of 6 California nat'l monuments now in Trump's hands" The Desert Sun
8-24-17
A smaller monument: Castle Mountains
Castle Mountains National Monument wasn’t included on the Trump administration’s original list of monuments that fell under the review.
At 21,000 acres, the monument is much smaller than the threshold of 100,000 acres specified by federal officials. But Trump’s executive order said exceptions could be made for cases where Zinke "determines that the designation or expansion was made without adequate public outreach."
And Rep. Cook, whose district includes the monument, had urged Trump and Zinke to reexamine it and carve out more space for a gold mine.
The monument surrounds the Castle Mountain gold mine, which the Canadian company NewCastle Gold is looking to reopen more than a decade after it was shut down due to low gold prices.
In a June 8 letter, Cook told Zinke the monument was created without adequate public outreach and said Castle Mountains is “worthy of the utmost scrutiny by your department.”
It’s not clear whether the Trump administration has taken up Cook’s suggestion to include the monument in the review.
Castle Mountains was the smallest of three monuments that Obama established last year across the California desert. The monument includes jagged peaks, Joshua trees and grasslands in the desert between Mojave National Preserve and the Nevada state line.
NewCastle Gold has urged the Trump administration to shrink the monument by half to allow the company to develop new mining claims as well as water sources to supply the operation.
https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/environment/2017/08/24/california-national-monuments-trump-zinke/593759001/