Tucson Supports Oak Flat is sponsoring this event at Grace St. Paul’s Episcopalian Church, E. Adams Street, Tucson.

Fighting to protect the Santa Rita and Patagonia Mountains from the devastating impacts of mining.
Richard Govern argues that the state of Arizona accommodates the mining industry and foreign investors while Arizona residents get left holding the bag: depleted groundwater, polluted air and water, and millions of tons of tailings and waste rock. That doesn’t sound like a fair deal to us, either.
A new jaguar has been documented to exist in Southern Arizona — the second in the past four months and the third since 2011.
It’s the seventh jaguar documented to have been in the Southwest since 1996, after only one was known to occur in this region in the previous 20 years.
The jaguar was photographed on Nov. 16 in the Dos Cabezas Mountains in Cochise County, about 60 miles north of the U.S.-Mexican border, Arizona Game and Fish officials said in a news release Thursday morning. The jaguar’s sex couldn’t be determined by the photo, taken on a U.S. Bureau of Land Management-owned trail camera, Game and Fish said.
The photo was only recently retrieved and is the only jaguar photo the BLM camera has taken since the agency installed it last August, Game and Fish said.
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Curt Prendergast, Arizona Daily Star
A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the U.S. Forest Service erred in allowing a mining project to move forward without a detailed environmental review.
In her ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Marquez in Tucson said the drilling likely would exceed the one-year period required for a categorical exclusion to environmental assessment. Therefore, the Forest Service’s decision to grant the exclusion was arbitrary and capricious, she ruled.
Sparking controversy, two proposed copper mines in Arizona National Forest have different meanings to different people in the state.
Both the Rosemont and Oak Flat mine proposals are entrenched in the promise of economic prosperity and environmental degradation from the opposing sides.
One undisputable fact, from both views, is that a section of the federally protected land would be lost forever.
Oral arguments for our case before the 9th Circuit Appeals Court were held on February 1, 2021. Because of COVID, the oral arguments were virtual, and we could listen in. You can watch the recording here.
We cannot predict when we will hear a decision, but we expect to have to wait several months.
Click here for more updates