After Trump opened Bears Ears land to business, prospectors swooped in

Miners filed 16 claims on September 11, the first day 1.2 million acres of former Bears Ears National Monument land opened to prospecting, two months after Trump shrank the monument by about 90 percent. All the claims appear to come from small local operators with an interest in uranium, including Moab-based Kimmerle Mining, which filed 13 claims tied to its Easy Peasy mine.

Kimmerle Mining's Kyle Kimmerle had sued in 2023 over the mine being locked inside monument boundaries, claiming up to $3 million in lost profits, and tried filing Bears Ears claims in July before the window officially opened in September. Trump's proclamation listed uranium among a 'grab bag' of minerals the land may or may not contain, and the CEO of nearby uranium processor Energy Fuels bought company stock days before the monument shrank.

Environmental groups including the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance warn the claims will bring disturbance and pollution without necessarily yielding a viable mine, noting that decades of prior poking around Bears Ears never produced a production-level uranium operation. Utah officials have championed nuclear power and uranium supply as answers to rising electricity demand from artificial intelligence.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.