•      "[G]ranting the right of use and occupancy to claimants prior to showing the discovery of a valuable mineral greatly expands the rights conferred under the Mining Law, and could encourage the filing of nuisance claims that attempt to interfere with or prevent other authorized uses of public lands such as grazing, hunting, off- highway vehicle use, energy development, and more. It could also lead to unauthorized non- mining industrial uses and residential occupancy – often referred to as “squatting” – which previously necessitated the development of regulations to address the issue. It is also important to note that discovery of a valuable mineral deposit should always be required on lands that have been withdrawn from mineral entry, such as units of the National Park System." Source: Steve Feldgus, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Land and Minerals Management at the U.S. Department of the Interior

•      "The Mining Regulatory Clarity Act… undermines the federal government’s long standing authority to safeguard public lands, threatening the protection of irreplaceable cultural, environmental, water, and economic resources. That’s because the bill conveys mining claimants (including international mining conglomerates) with a right to permanently occupy federal public lands. If an alternative use—like an electric transmission line or a renewable energy project—needed to cross ‘claimed’ public lands, mining companies could extract large sums of money from the federal government in exchange for giving up their claim. As an example, if this bill were law in the 1900’s, Grand Canyon National Park wouldn’t exist as it does today. Future Senator Ralph Cameron filed mining claims covering the famous Bright Angel Trail, but they were invalidated due to a lack of a valuable mineral deposit. Had S. 1281/H.R. 2925 been law, Cameron would have had a vested right to undertake a wide variety of exclusionary or destructive activities on these claims and those claims would have superseded the Grand Canyon National Monument’s (later National Park’s) protections. Under S. 1281, all future prospective protected lands could suffer this fate." Source: 70+ conservation, climate, Indigenous, and tribal-affiliated organizations in a joint statement 

•      "It’s high time we stop giving mining and drilling companies first dibs on how we use public lands… The 150-year-old law that governs mining in the U.S. is severely outdated, already incredibly permissive to the mining industry, and offers no protections for communities and public lands facing the threat of toxic mining. This proposal would essentially remove the only teeth the General Mining Law of 1872 has: the requirement that a mining company prove it’s found valuable locatable minerals in the ground it plans to mine." Source: Kiara Tringali, Senior Government Relations Representative at the Wilderness Society