More Public Lands Withdrawn

[Clay Diggins]

Yesterday two more National Monuments were declared.

Sáttítla Highlands  - https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/01/17/2025-01443/establishment-of-the-stttla-highlands-national-monument

Chuckwalla  - https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/01/17/2025-01441/establishment-of-the-chuckwalla-national-monument

These withdrawals were both in California and total 840,000 acres. The Chuckwalla closes off the area between the Joshua Tree National Park withdrawal and the Palen/McCoy wilderness withdrawal effectively putting the entire mineralized area off limits to mining.

Total mineral withdrawals for the last year alone total more than a million square miles. I map these withdrawals in my business and it has been a very busy few years. I don't have the totals yet but recent mineral withdrawals have nearly doubled the land removed from mining in the previous 200 years.

Word is there will be more withdrawals before the weekend is over. I'll try to keep this thread updated if/when that happens.

Barry

[Steve Herschbach]

Anyone looking to express their outrage here, please contact your representatives instead with your opinion. That way it might matter. Here it will get deleted wasting your time and mine, so don’t bother. This is and will remain a politics free forum. Thanks.

[Clay Diggins]

Thanks Steve. Politics never found a nugget.

Many prospectors see these monuments as doom and gloom but for the way most detectorists prospect this is really to their benefit. With these withdrawals prospectors can no longer locate a mining claim if they find a good patch but in almost all cases they can still prospect these lands if they do so with a few simple modifications to their usual process. It's what many profess to want - open minerals with no claims to get in the way of detecting.

To be clear - National Parks, National Seashores, National Grasslands, Purchase Units and National Recreation Areas can not be prospected unless Congress created a specific exemption in law. However Wilderness, National Monuments, Mineral Withdrawals, Water Reserves and many other types of land and mineral withdrawals still allow prospecting unless it's specifically prohibited.

You will need to read the documents that created that individual withdrawal to see if prospecting is prohibited. It rarely is prohibited but you can't assume it isn't. That's why I included links to the Federal Register notice that exactly defines the monuments. This also avoids confusion with incomplete or enhanced media reporting.

The biggest benefit to detector prospectors in all these withdrawals is Wilderness and Wilderness Study Area withdrawals, There are a bunch of them. Congress specifically allows and encourages prospecting in all wilderness areas - no permit necessary. Mineral surveys are required by law before and after the wilderness is designated. It's right there in the original Wilderness Act. The mineral surveys are available to the public. I know several detector prospectors that have been quite successful in defining the mineral deposits in wilderness areas. 

You still need to use common sense when prospecting. Barry did not just tell you it's OK to dig the foundation from under the Monument greeting center. Monuments are created for a purpose. Monuments may still have grandfathered active mining claims, due diligence is still a requirement. Monuments may have specific areas designated by management for purposes incompatible with prospecting. If you don't observe and respect the purpose, rules and infrastructure of the monument you will be spending time reconsidering your actions with many other men in a restricted environment where no detecting is permitted unless you have a badge.

On a more personal note - I'm going to have a heck of a time trying to map these new monuments. These notices don't even meet the simplest requirements for a public proclamation notice. There is no legal land description (required). The faded third generation black and white xerox copy of some random pencil squiggles on a map offered as a boundary description looks more like a wish list than a usable description. The many paragraphs of reasoning for the monuments is well written and developed over a period of time but the actual description of where the monument is located looks like it was done overnight by someone who had never filled out a Federal Register Notice submission much less a presidential proclamation.

Common sense. Low and slow. Fill your holes.

Educate yourself and prosper!

Barry

[Steve Herschbach]

Thanks Barry. I know you are a busy guy but a section on your site "lands closed to mining claims but open to prospecting with a metal detector etc." might generate a lot of interest. You can bet a section like that would get linked to a lot from other sites like this one.

[Clay Diggins]

Just now, Steve Herschbach said:

Thanks Barry. I know you are a busy guy but a section on your site "lands closed to mining claims but open to prospecting with a metal detector etc." might generate a lot of interest.

You are right it would be a popular feature. With dozens of withdrawals created and expired a year and all those legal docs to read, interpret and map Land Matters would need several more professional volunteers just to stay somewhat current. Any volunteers out there?

Land Matters does provide Wilderness mapping on their Land Status maps. That provides a partial map of open to prospecting areas. We don't have to read legal documents to determine the prospecting status of wilderness because Congress opened all wilderness to prospecting. You still need to check for grandfathered active claims in wilderness.

http://www.mylandmatters.org/Maps/LandStatus.html

In my commercial business my clients main interest is in the opposite map - those areas open to location, sale or lease. I can't imagine they would ever pay for a map describing where they can prospect yet can't mine. Miners mine.

On the same subject large mining companies are aware of the benefits of prospecting the wilderness and withdrawn areas adjacent to their mineral discoveries. I've seen several private mineral surveys in wilderness and withdrawals completed by mining companies after the land was withdrawn. Geology doesn't stop at administrative boundaries and Congress understood that when they created the legal framework for mineral withdrawals.

[Steve Herschbach]

10 minutes ago, Clay Diggins said:

I can't imagine they would ever pay for a map describing where they can prospect yet can't mine.

I used to have a large wall map of Alaska. I blocked out all the national parks and other areas that were closed to mining. Everything left was my playground. Depending on how you look at it knowing where not to go is almost as good as knowing where to go. Depends on the state I suppose. If most land is closed then seek out what is open. If a lot is open, then figure out what’s closed. Alaska and Nevada are great due to all the open land.

[Clay Diggins]

3 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

I used to have a large wall map of Alaska. I blocked out all the national parks and other areas that were closed to mining. Everything left was my playground. Depending on how you look at it knowing where not to go is almost as good as knowing where to go.

That works for the most obvious withdrawals but it doesn't account for all the other hundreds of reasons minerals may not be open to location. Obscure land classifications like acquisitions, exchanges and small tracts are just as controlling as a National Park designation. All those land status classes and about 70 more look just like any other portion of Forest or BLM managed lands on a map but they are not open to location.

I'm just finishing up classifying and mapping mineral ownership in Arizona and there are more than 4 million individual cases affecting mineral rights. I imagine Alaska would be much more complex.

I track mining claim status and the majority of mining claims that are closed by the BLM each year are closed for locating on lands not open to mineral location. Just seeing green or brown on a map doesn't indicate that a mining claim can be located or even that the minerals are open to prospecting. For example the many lands that have been acquired (purchased) by the United States are often incorporated into existing Forests or BLM management but those minerals will never be open to claim. I don't know of any public map that shows the many acquired lands.

On the other hand there are many private lands where the minerals are open to location. Yep -  on Stock Raising and Homestead Act patents the minerals can be claimed and mined by a process very similar to regular mining claims. There are a LOT of these lands in the Western U.S.

I wish this country could come up with a system like Canada, Mexico or Australia where the public can access this information freely on an up to date map. Unfortunately, due to the nature of mineral rights in the U.S., that will probably never be possible.

The first law of mining in the United States is that Federal Title to the land is not a consideration in disputes over mineral ownership. In the United States mineral rights on public lands are acquired by discovery and maintained by the law of possession only. The Federal Government is barred by law from adjudicating the mineral right of claimants. All mineral rights are acquired under a self initiated personal claim of right to the minerals. Only the claimant can provide proof of their claims validity.

No other country on earth ever gave their minerals to the citizens that find them by right of discovery. This is a very special and unique individual right that will be lost if we fail to understand and respect the value of this admittedly complex system.

[Steve Herschbach]

Yeah well I’ve always been a big picture kind of guy. I worry about the details only when they matter to me. 

[Jim McCulloch]

Does anyone know if the Monument included the Dale Mining District?