Letter From Montana: Saving a Rare Earth

On the first of December, the commissioners of Ravalli County Montana met in order to weigh arguments for and against a rare earths mine proposed for the headwaters of the Bitterroot River. This county, where I have lived for over fifty years, is located in the far southwestern corner of the state, an area known for its scenic beauty, relatively mild climate and productive trout streams. It has also been the site of contentious, at times violent struggles over natural resource extraction, wolf re-introduction and immigrant re-settlement, so I was more than a little curious to see which factions might show up for this meeting and how the mining proposal would be received.

Historically, mining companies would look to the Global South for both less-contested access to minerals and places with lenient or non-existent environmental regulation. This neocolonial approach is often abetted by local elites and one can find this dynamic currently playing out in many resource-rich regions around the globe. Green capitalism has only accelerated this geopolitical scramble. The minerals needed for the production of renewable energy and a modernized grid must come from somewhere. Given the current trajectory, there will be “sacrifice zones” where both the environmental and social impacts inevitably fall on some community or ecosystem somewhere. The question then becomes: who decides? All too often it has been the collusion between investors and their politician clients. They seek disempowered or marginalized communities who offer scant resistance and are more easily bribed by the promise of jobs and economic growth.

A typical commission meeting in my county might attract five to thirty interested citizens. This meeting had been moved twice to larger and larger venues to accommodate the expected crowds. And indeed, there were well over five hundred people in attendance to hear the representatives of a company called U.S. Critical Minerals explain their plan. It appeared that public scrutiny around risky projects was growing. As Thea Riofrancos puts it in her book Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, “resistance to extraction has proliferated along the ever-expanding frontiers of global capitalism, especially as affected communities have grown more environmentally conscious of the threats that mining poses to their land and water.” So it went on this December afternoon.

The mine proponents began with an appeal to national security, extolling the need for the U.S. to break the grip of China and their dominant position in the supply chain of critical minerals. Hoping to tap a patriotic vein, they stressed the military applications and our strategically disastrous dependence on foreign sources. They talked about good jobs and high wages and protections that would be put in place to minimize impacts ─ the things mining companies always say ─ but from the murmuring and groans from the crowd, I was already sensing the near total opposition to their spiel. Adding to the contentiousness, the Sheep Creek mine proposal had been added to the FAST 41 list of projects, a Trump directive meant to “streamline” and “accelerate” domestic critical mineral production by “cutting red tape”. In other words, skirting thorough environmental review.

After two local environmentalists provided rebuttals there was, to my surprise, unanimous applause and it became readily apparent from the follow-up questions posed by our staunchly conservative commissioners that they would not be supporting the project. These pro-logging, pro-development, America First officials had read the room ─ a large hall full of farmers, real estate brokers, fishing guides and retired property owners ─ and decided our valuable watershed was no place for a mine and its associated impacts.

How then to account for this overwhelming consensus against mineral exploration and development in a region dominated by right wing conservatives, a place where conservative super-majorities control the legislature, where both Senators and all three Congressional Representatives identify as conservative, and in a county where Trump received 68% of the vote? Have everyday citizens and political elites suddenly taken up the Standing Rock slogan that “Water is Life”? Is this simply a case of NIMBY overriding MAGA? Or was the overwhelming opposition the result of effective organizing? I would suggest the answer is all of the above.

Of course, having three county commissioners stating opposition to the project in a letter to their State and National representatives does not mean the project is dead. We can look to places like Thacker Pass in Nevada or the Atacama Basin in Chile to see how powerful corporate actors, aligned with government forces, can push past local opposition. But as Riofrancos reminds us: “Extraction is fundamentally a political question and an arena riven by conflicts ─ between Global North and Global South, between states and firms, between communities and corporations, between workers and their bosses.” The citizens of Ravalli County seem ready to embrace that conflict.

Montana has long served as an endogenous resource “colony” for the U.S., exploited for its timber, fossil fuel, grassland and mineral wealth. Political elites from both parties have enthusiastically supported this role. And in boom times, these sectors provided the highest wages and benefits available to workers. But in counties such as Ravalli, where the high-value timber was taken out in the post-war years, the economic base has shifted to real estate and tourism. While resource nationalism might appeal in the abstract to Montanans, they tend to be less keen on extraction when it comes to areas prized for their recreation, scenic and property value.

Because Montana has a long history of being our nation’s “sacrifice zone”, river systems have been poisoned, aquifers contaminated and animal habitat fragmented by mining activity. Communities have been sickened by asbestos, landscapes ravaged by smelter pollution. Meanwhile, the costs of cleanup and reclamation from abandoned or bankrupt operations have fallen on taxpayers for decades. The question the citizens of Ravalli County have to answer is: by rejecting a mine in your own backyard, are you simply sending it to a community that wields less influence, that is less able to resist? Can you simply look away when the impacts fall on others? In other words, if the impacts are unacceptable for your community, who should have to accept them? The answers to these types of questions distinguish conservation from environmental justice. And the next question is the familiar one: which side are you on?

Dave Jones is a retired fishing guide and autodidact living in western Montana. He is the father of three amazing women and husband to a fourth. He is a founding member of the Zootown Zapatistas and is active with DSA as well as with System Change Not Climate Change.

Related Video

MTN News report on the December 1, 2025, public meeting.