The BLM has given an Australian company permission to resume operations at the Colosseum Mine in Mojave National Preserve/NPS file

Editor's note: This updates with some background around NPCA's claims that Colosseum's owners have been illegally mining the site.

An Australian company with rights to a mine within Mojave National Preserve in California has received approval from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to resume operations, although it's been accused of illegally mining there for some time.

In announcing this week that the company could resume mining, the BLM said that, "[T]he resumption of mining at Colosseum Mine, America’s second rare earth elements mine, supports efforts to bolster America’s capacity to produce the critical materials needed to manufacture the technologies to power our future. For too long, the United States has depended on foreign adversaries like China for rare earth elements for technologies that are vital to our national security. By recognizing the mine’s continued right to extract and explore rare earth elements, Interior continues to support industries that boost the nation’s economy and protect national security."

But National Parks Conservation Association staff maintain that the Australian company that holds the mining rights has been illegally working on the site for some time despite the National Park Service issuing cease-and-desist orders, and has caused $200,000 in damages to the preserve.

“Mojave National Preserve is a national park and the Trump administration is blatantly ignoring its protected status. The Bureau of Land Management can’t authorize this foreign-owned mine in a national park. This makes no sense any way you read it," said Chance Wilcox, NPCA’s California Desert program manager. “The National Park Service has clearly documented that this Australian-owned mine is responsible for hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages to Mojave and is conducting speculative mining without authorization. The Trump administration’s misguided effort to give an Australian mine a free pass to our National Park System, while saddling American taxpayers with the clean-up costs, is an outright betrayal of our parks.”

Documents between the Park Service and the mining company's legal representative obtained by NPCA and reviewed by the Traveler outline a difference of opinion over whether Colosseum (Colosseum Rare Metals, Mine Water, and Oretest, aka Dateline Resources Limited, or CRM) had a Park Service-approved operations plan. While the company's attorneys maintained that the Park Service in 1995 "recognized as valid" an operational plan for the site that the company's predecessor had obtained from the BLM in the 1980s, the Park Service position as outlined in a June 2023 letter maintained that the 1995 decision was a temporary approval for continued reclamation work and tailings pond water treatment and monitoring.

"Contrary to your statements, the NPS did not 'recognize' or 'acknowledge' that the BLM-approved plan of operations would be 'valid' into perpetuity in Mojave National Preserve, that it would cover all types of operations in addition to reclamation and tailings pond water treatment, or that it would allow future mining operators at the Colosseum Mine Site, such as CRM, to ignore NPS laws and regulations," William Shott, the acting Pacific West regional director wrote, to the attorneys. "Indeed, the NPS would have lacked the authority to make such a sweeping exemption from federal law and regulations."

The letter also directed the company to halt operations and remove its equipment from the preserve until it receives NPS approval for its operational plans, and added that a "demand letter" to cover unspecified damages to the preserve would be forthcoming.

According to Wilcox, the company did not cease operations and has been "doing unauthorized road work up to the mine through the preserve and equipment was being brought up to the mine after the road work."

Dateline Resources, which has said the site holds an estimated 1.1 million ounces of recoverable gold as well as an unspecified amount of rare earth minerals, applauded the BLM's approval this past Wednesday with a statement on its website that "the United States Department of the Interior has publicly confirmed the Company’s ongoing rights to develop the Colosseum Project in California under its existing, approved Plan of Operations."

"The Department's communication reaffirms that Dateline holds valid existing rights under the Mining Act and the California Desert Protection Act, including the right to explore for and extract rare earth elements in addition to gold," the statement added.

Dateline's managing director, Stephen Baghdadi, said that, "[T]he Department of the Interior’s public support and confirmation of our rights provide a strong foundation for moving the Colosseum Project forward. We are pleased that the United States Government continues to recognise the strategic importance of domestic mineral development. With a defined gold resource and newly prioritised rare earth exploration.”

The Colosseum Mine dates to the 1980s, when a cynanide leach process was used to extract gold from ore. According to the BLM, the mine is within the old Clark Mountain Mining District, which produced silver, gold, copper, lead, tungsten and fluorite at various times over the last 120 years. Gold was first produced in the district in the 1930s. 

Mining ended in 1992, and Mojave National Preserve was established two years later, with the BLM transferring the land to the National Park Service.