The West Has the Minerals America Needs. That's the Problem
China controls the refining. The 1872 Mining Law controls the land. The critical minerals crisis could change the American West forever. If we let it.
(~15 min read with my solution at the end.)
This year I took my daughter camping for the first time. Public land near Death Valley. She’s one, so she won’t remember any of it. She doesn’t know what she was in the middle of. I do. I drove home thinking about what that land is, who it belongs to, and whether it’ll still be there when she’s old enough to ask about it.
I’m still working out the answer.
When Empires Need to Feed Themselves
There’s a place near Death Valley where the light goes sideways in the late afternoon and the whole desert turns a color that doesn’t have a name. My wife and I sat in it, took some pictures, appreciated the beauty. My one-year-old daughter had no idea. She was just there, fully present and completely unaware of what she was in the middle of. I was thinking about how old the rocks were and how recently we showed up and what we’d done with the time. It was one of the better afternoons I’ve had.
That kind of afternoon is only possible because that land is public. Held in common. Yours, mine, hers. And right now that land is being looked at very differently by very powerful people. Less like a desert that turns colors without names. More like a supply chain problem to be solved.
We are living through the slow-motion end of the global order America built after World War II. The petrodollar is being challenged. Allies are hedging. China controls the minerals that power the next century.
Lets add minerals to the energy security conversation, because the gap in our mineral supply chain is actually more dangerous than our energy gap, and both problems point at the same piece of ground. The 640 million acres of public land this country holds in common are suddenly the most strategically important real estate on Earth.
At what point does saving the nation destroy the thing worth saving? That’s the question nobody is asking loudly enough.
China began restricting exports of antimony, gallium, and germanium to the United States in December 2024. Rare earth restrictions followed in April 2025. Battery supply chain controls in October 2025. These are all leverage. We handed it to them, slowly, over decades, while we were not paying attention.
Which brings us to a question Aldo Leopold tried to answer in 1949, and few in Washington has seriously attempted since.
What do we owe the land?
The Ground Beneath the Strategy
The federal government manages approximately 640 million surface acres, 28 percent of all land in the United States. The Bureau of Land Management alone oversees 244 million surface acres and 714 million acres of mineral rights beneath lands whose surfaces may belong to other agencies or private owners.
Nearly half of the eleven western states is federal land. Nevada is 80 percent federal. The West is a public commons, and most Americans have never thought of it that way. That is about to change.
Federal lands produce 26 percent of US oil, 13 percent of natural gas, and nearly half of all coal. They generated $16.45 billion in energy revenue in fiscal year 2024. But the critical minerals picture is where the pressure is really building.
The Thacker Pass lithium deposit in Nevada, the largest known lithium deposit in the country and the third-largest in the world, sits on BLM land. Resolution Copper in Arizona lies beneath the Tonto National Forest. The Twin Metals cobalt and nickel deposit in Minnesota borders the Boundary Waters. The Idaho Cobalt Belt crosses Forest Service and BLM land.
The minerals we need most are almost entirely on the land we share. So what does that mean for what happens to it?
The Numbers Behind the Dependency
The 2025 USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries lay it out plainly. The US is 100 percent import-reliant for 15 minerals and more than 50 percent reliant for 46 of them. The 2025 Critical Minerals List expanded to 60 minerals, adding 10 new minerals including copper, uranium, and phosphate.
China’s dominance is mainly around processing more then mining. China refines approximately 90 percent of the world’s rare earths, approximately 60-70 percent of cobalt, 70 percent of lithium into battery-grade chemicals, and 90 percent of battery-grade graphite. For 19 of 20 strategic minerals assessed by the International Energy Agency, China is the leading processor, averaging around 70 percent market share. That share has grown since 2020.
The IEA projects lithium demand will increase fivefold by 2040. Copper faces a projected 30 percent supply gap by 2035. Full separation from Chinese supply chains would require the US to mine and process domestically minerals that currently flow almost entirely through Chinese facilities.
The Department of Defense has invested $439 million since 2020 rebuilding domestic rare earth supply chains. Congress put $2 billion into the National Defense Stockpile in 2025 and another $5 billion toward critical mineral supply chains.
The urgency is real. The question is whether urgency becomes an excuse to skip the hard thinking about what we are actually giving up.
The Energy Math Actually Works
Here is something that keeps getting buried: the United States is already a net energy exporter. In 2024, the US produced 103.3 quadrillion BTUs against total consumption of 94.2 quads. We produce more than we use.
NREL’s modeling of a 100 percent clean electricity grid by 2035 estimates a direct land footprint of 14.3 million acres for wind, solar, and transmission. Less than 1 percent of US land. Ninety-three percent of wind energy built since 2000 went onto farmland and rangeland, using less than 4 percent of the total lease area. Rooftop and parking lot solar alone could generate 50 percent of US electricity with zero new land required. Add solar-plus-storage on some farmland and brownfields, and the case gets a lot stronger.
And then there is geothermal. The USGS estimates 517,800 megawatts of enhanced geothermal potential in the western US, nearly all of it on federal land. Steady, round-the-clock power with minimal surface disturbance. You use underground heat without completely destroying land.
The path to energy and mineral security does not require sacrificing every intact desert basin in the American West. So why does the current policy conversation make it feel like those are the only two options?
The Land We Have Already Broken
There are approximately 450,000 contaminated industrial sites across the United States covering an estimated 5 million acres. The EPA and NREL have already screened more than 190,000 of them for renewable energy potential. There are between 100,000 and 500,000 abandoned hardrock mine sites across the country, at least 140,000 on federal land.
My daughter sat in the dirt on land that looked untouched. She won’t remember it. But somewhere not far from where we sat, there are mines from the last gold rush that nobody ever cleaned up. Open shafts. Waste piles. Acid seeping into groundwater nobody monitors anymore. The estimated cleanup cost for abandoned hardrock mines runs between $32 and $72 billion with no dedicated funding to cover it. The companies that dug and left paid nothing. The public carries the bill.
That is where the extraction conversation should start. We have 15 million acres of land we already damaged that could host much of the energy and mineral infrastructure this country needs. Why are we talking about the intact places first?
What the Science Says About Healing
In Wyoming sagebrush country, researchers found that sagebrush takes at least 87 years to recover on abandoned well pads. Wildflower communities showed virtually no recovery even after 87 years. A USGS study found that formal reclamation did not speed up plant recovery compared to simply walking away. It improved grass cover. It did not bring back the sagebrush or rebuild the soil biology the ecosystem depends on.
A 2024 study in Restoration Ecology evaluated one of the most carefully managed mine restoration programs in the world, Alcoa’s bauxite operation in Western Australia, watched for 40 years. Restoration quality scored 2 out of 5. Two-thirds of the plant species that should have been there were absent or severely depleted.
Acid mine drainage deserves its own paragraph. No large-scale hardrock mine has shown it can stop acid drainage once it starts. More than 40 US mines generate between 17 and 27 billion gallons of contaminated water every year, indefinitely. Ninety percent of mines that predicted they would not have this problem later developed it anyway.
Water makes everything worse in the arid West. The Thacker Pass lithium mine is projected to use 1.7 billion gallons of water per year for at least 46 years in a basin where actual water availability is far lower than models estimated. At Silver Peak, Nevada, the only operating US lithium mine, nearby well levels have dropped. Monitoring reports attributed the decline specifically to mine dewatering.
When the water is gone, what replaces it?
What Other Countries Figured Out
Norway taxes petroleum profits at 78 percent and deposits all net revenue into a national fund now worth $2.2 trillion, roughly $350,000+ per Norwegian citizen. The fund was built on the principle that a finite resource belongs to all citizens including future ones. Norway banned routine gas flaring in the 1970s and got wealthy without wrecking its environment.
Canada requires mining companies to file closure plans and post full financial bonds before a single shovel goes into the ground. The legal duty to consult Indigenous communities now applies before mining claims are even registered. Canada passed UNDRIP implementation legislation in 2021.
Australia charges mining royalties of 2.5 to 7.5 percent. Western Australia collected $12 billion in mining royalties in fiscal year 2024 to 2025. Environmental rules require companies to avoid harm first, reduce it second, and only then offset what cannot be avoided.
In all three countries the public gets paid for public resources. Companies must prove they can clean up before they dig. Indigenous communities have real legal standing. Why don’t we?
The Law Written for a Different Century
The General Mining Law of 1872 was signed by Ulysses Grant. It charges zero federal royalties on extracted hardrock minerals. No environmental requirements. No reclamation mandate. Companies do not even have to report how much they extracted. The annual fee to hold a mining claim is $200.
Oil and gas companies pay royalties of 12.5 to 16.67 percent on federal land. Coal companies pay 8 to 12.5 percent. Those industries sent $16.45 billion to the Treasury in fiscal year 2024. Hardrock mining companies paid essentially nothing in federal royalties while extracting minerals worth tens of billions.
The Biden administration put together more than 60 reform recommendations in 2024. A federal royalty. Mandatory cleanup bonds before production begins. A dedicated fund for abandoned mine reclamation. Congress did not act on any of them.
The National Environmental Policy Act was functionally restructured in early 2025. The rules agencies use to implement it were rescinded. The Supreme Court’s 2025 decision in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County said agencies only need to analyze effects within their own regulatory authority, not broader consequences separate upstream or downstream projects. Major extraction projects will now face lighter review at exactly the moment when more extraction is being proposed.
A law from 1872 is governing decisions about minerals that did not become strategic priorities until 2020. Does that make sense to anyone?
The Communities Being Skipped
The Thacker Pass lithium mine in Nevada sits near the site of an 1865 cavalry massacre of Paiute and Shoshone people. The BLM’s consultation process consisted of three rounds of mailings to three tribal governments during the COVID pandemic. No in-person meetings. No consent process.
A February 2025 report from Human Rights Watch and the ACLU concluded the project violated international human rights standards. The 9th Circuit allowed it to proceed.
Most major critical mineral deposits in the United States are located near Indigenous lands. The 1872 Mining Law provides no mechanism for meaningful consent. Indigenous communities have managed these landscapes for thousands of years. They make up 5 percent of global population and steward land containing 85 percent of the world’s remaining biodiversity. The Haudenosaunee Seventh Generation Principle holds that decisions should benefit children seven generations into the future, roughly 150 years from now.
Sagebrush takes 87 years to recover. Acid drainage runs indefinitely. A 150-year planning horizon is minimum the science demands.
What would it look like to actually include these communities in the decisions that affect them most?
Five Principles for What Comes Next
The strategic emergency is real. The ecological reckoning is real. They don’t have to produce the same outcome they always have, which is extraction first and consequences paid by the land and by the people who live closest to it.
A modern land ethic for the age of critical minerals rests on five principles.
Extract from already-wounded land first. The 450,000 brownfield industrial sites. The 500,000 abandoned mines. The rooftops. The parking lots. The agricultural land where wind turbines already coexist with farming. This is not idealism. It is the only rational sequence. We have 5 million acres of degraded land that needs reclamation and could host the energy infrastructure this country needs. We should start there.
The public captures fair value and full-cost accountability. A federal hardrock royalty of 8 to 12 percent. Mandatory pre-production closure plans and reclamation bonds with no self-bonding loophole. A dedicated abandoned mine fund modeled on SMCRA’s coal program. Operators pay the full cost of what they do, before they do it. That is how every peer nation operates. We are the outlier.
Some landscapes are beyond extraction. The 112 million acres of designated Wilderness. Critical wildlife migration corridors. Sites of irreplaceable Indigenous cultural significance. The science on sagebrush recovery, on acid mine drainage, and on mine restoration outcomes makes clear that extraction in arid western ecosystems causes damage measurable in centuries. A modern land ethic draws hard lines. Strategic necessity is not a blank check.
Indigenous peoples are rights-holders, not stakeholders. Meaningful consent from tribal nations is a prerequisite for extraction on lands with Indigenous cultural, spiritual, or treaty connections. Not mailings. Not notices. Consent. This is both a moral obligation and, increasingly, an international legal standard the US has refused to meet.
The planning horizon must match the consequences. A mine that generates acid drainage in perpetuity should not be permitted based on a 20-year economic model. A sagebrush ecosystem that takes 87 years to recover should not be sacrificed for a 10-year production cycle. The decisions being made now will determine what is left in 2075, in 2100, in 2150. Leopold’s land community, Stegner’s geography of hope, the Seventh Generation Principle all converge on the same demand: think further than the next earnings call.
What I Want Her to Find
My daughter won’t remember that trip. She’s one. The light, the rocks, the dirt, none of it is going to stick. That is fine. That is not why I took her.
I took her because I wanted her to have been there. Because I think something gets into you from a place like that even before you have the words for it. And because I want her to be able to go back when she does have the words.
Whether that is possible depends on decisions being made right now, mostly by people who are not thinking about who might need that land in 25 years.
Wallace Stegner wrote that wilderness is the geography of hope. Not a resource. Not a recreation asset. Hope. The kind that sustains a civilization's sense of what it is capable of, what it is worth preserving, and why the project of living here matters.
Leopold wrote that we abuse land because we see it as something we own. We stop abusing it when we see it as a community we belong to. My daughter belongs to that place already, even if she has no idea. The question is whether we will leave it for her.
Neither man was naive. Neither was arguing for zero extraction. They were arguing for the one thing American resource policy has never consistently demonstrated: the idea that the land has a claim on us, not just the other way around.
The strategic crisis bearing down on us is real. The petrodollar is weakening. The Chinese export controls are already here. The mineral deficit is already widening. The country will need to make hard decisions about what to dig up and where.
A country with 450,000 contaminated sites ready for redevelopment, nearly 2,000 gigawatts of untapped rooftop solar capacity, and more enhanced geothermal potential than almost anywhere on Earth does not have to answer the mineral security crisis by tearing through every intact landscape in the West. We have the degraded land. We have the legal tools to fix the 1872 Mining Law. We have the examples of countries that figured out how to extract at scale without leaving the land as a sacrifice zone.
What we are short on is the political will.
The empire does not collapse all at once. It runs out of the things it forgot it needed. Right now we are forgetting that intact land, clean water, and functioning ecosystems are not obstacles to national security. They are part of what we are supposed to be securing.
Can we remember that before it is too late to act on it?
Thank you for reading! Wild places don’t come back. Conservation Current tracks the policies, projects, and decisions eating away at America’s public lands, and holds the energy industry accountable when it takes the easy path over the right one.
I write this, build this, and fund this myself. If you find any value in this, a coffee goes a long way.
Check out The Conservation Current Public Land Policy Tracker surfaces the five most impactful open comment periods and regulatory actions on federal public lands. Ranked by scale, irreversibility, and deadline urgency. Updated weekly. Always verify deadlines at regulations.gov before submitting.
I used Claude to help me gather the primary source data. Then went back to confirm primary sources and I wrote this piece.
Sources: EIA, USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025, NREL, IEA Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025, U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. GAO, Earthworks, Princeton Net-Zero America, Ecological Society of America, Wiley Ecosphere, Restoration Ecology (Campbell et al. 2024), Human Rights Watch, ACLU, Aldo Leopold Foundation, PNAS, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Province of British Columbia, Canada.ca, Norges Bank Investment Management
Beautifully written and highly informative. Thank you