WTF Is It Now?!?

The Toxic Tinhorn administration to reopen mining area considered for national monument

MEDFORD, Ore. (AP) -- The Bush administration will open most of the 1.2 million acres of federal land in southwestern Oregon to mining claims, drawing the ire of environmentalists who say the action threatens salmon and steelhead protected by the Endangered Species Act.

The area covers about 90 percent of the 1.2 million acres of Siskiyou National Forest and 152,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management land. In the waning days of the Clinton administration, then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt had imposed a two-year moratorium on new mining claims on the land; the Bush administration canceled that ban Tuesday.

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