September 30, 2014 – DENVER, CO. A 119-year-old nonprofit, non-partisan mining trade association with thousands of members today suffered defeat in an Arizona federal district court in its attempt to void a decision by the Secretary of the Interior locking up a million acres of federal land in northwestern Arizona be invalidated. The American Exploration and Mining Association (AEMA) (formerly Northwest Mining Association) of Spokane, Washington, claimed in its 2012 complaint and subsequent briefings and arguments that Interior Secretary Salazar’s January 2012 order withdrawing land from entry under the General Mineral Law to block access to millions of pounds of the nation’s highest-grade uranium ore violates federal laws. AEMA urged the district court to rule that the Secretary violated the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), the U.S. Forest Service violated the National Forest Management Act, and the Secretary violated the bar of the Constitution against the establishment of religion. The case concerns the “Arizona Strip” and Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management land.

“We are disappointed by the district court’s ruling, which defers totally to the Secretary’s decision,” said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF). MSLF represents the AEMA and its members.

The Arizona Strip, which lies north of the Colorado River in northern Arizona, is bordered to the south by the northern rim of Grand Canyon National Park. In the 1984 Arizona Wilderness Act, Congress designated 250,000 acres of federal land on or near the Arizona Strip as wilderness and released 600,000 acres of land in the same area for multiple use, including uranium mining, as a result of an historic compromise among environmental groups, uranium mining interests, the livestock industry, and others.

In July 2009, Secretary Salazar proposed to withdraw from operation of the General Mining Law 633,547 acres of BLM lands and 360,002 acres of National Forest lands in the Arizona Strip for up to 20 years to “protect the Grand Canyon watershed from adverse effects of locatable hardrock mineral exploration and mining.”

In February 2011, the BLM issued a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) regarding the proposed withdrawal in response to which the NWMA filed comments noting that uranium mining is not a threat to the environment of the Grand Canyon or the Colorado River watershed, given the scores of state and federal laws enacted to protect those resources.

In June 2011, Secretary Salazar issued an emergency withdrawal of the lands; in October 2011, the BLM issued a Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS); and, in January 2012, Secretary Salazar issued his order.

Mountain States Legal Foundation, founded in 1977, is a nonprofit, public-interest legal foundation dedicated to individual liberty, the right to own and use property, limited and ethical government, and the free enterprise system. Its offices are in suburban Denver, Colorado.