RIGHT TO THE KORE
Published in the April 11, 2026 issue.
Not too long ago, environmental advocacy groups sued the Inyo National Forest over a mining project near Hot Creek. They won. But this month, the golddiggers are giving it a second shot.
The proposal, from Canadian mining company KORE Mining Ltd, is essentially a repeat of its 2021 plan, which was an exploratory drilling project across 12 drill pads on roughly 1,848 acres of mining claims in the Long Valley area. The original proposal said each pad would see up to three core borings for rock sampling, with drilling expected to take about a week per location.
Officials expect the renewed proposal to reach the Forest Service later this month.
Back in 2021, the Forest Service approved the project by combining two categorical exclusions (CEs) to bypass the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which normally requires environmental review for projects on public land.
Several environmental groups, including local group Friends of the Inyo, sued, arguing that the agency could not combine two categorical exclusions when neither alone ??a major push for the organization, which does not usually pursue litigation.
“We’ve been around 40 years now, and we’ve only ever sued the Inyo National Forest about this project,” said Wendy Schneider, executive director of Friends of the Inyo.
The trial court initially sided with KORE and the Forest Service in 2023, but the Ninth Circuit reversed in May 2024.
The court found that the two-phase project was a single action and that combining CEs was not allowed. The Forest Service’s error was deemed significant, and the agency’s approval was vacated just days before bulldozers were set to roll.
With that approval invalidated, any new proposal must undergo the federal review process again. And though the land is the same, the political landscape has changed.
While NEPA itself still requires environmental and cultural analysis for sizable projects, the implementing regulations governing transparency and public input have been rolled back under President Donald Trump’s Executive Order “Unleashing American Energy.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, issued new procedural rules that reduce review steps, shorten or eliminate some public comment stages, and may allow projects that previously required a full environmental impact statement to qualify for a more limited review.
The changes have already made it harder to track projects. In the past, the Forest Service would notify conservation and Indigenous groups ahead of time; now, that early notice is gone.
“We’ve just been waiting for this shoe to drop,” Schneider said.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the Long Valley project had not yet appeared on the Forest Service NEPA proposed projects website.
Even then, it’s not clear how much input the public will be allowed to have or how it will be evaluated.
“It used to be that the [USFS] had to go through and consider all of the comments,” Schneider said. “I just don’t know what’s going to happen this time around. I feel like they’ve already decided this is going to be approved. They’re just going through the motions.”
Still, Friends of the Inyo plans to fight the proposal again, submitting a technical comment letter outlining ecological and environmental health reasons why skipping proper review would be illegal, and rallying other organizations and the community to oppose it, just like last time.
These concerns are wide-ranging. The project would be visible from Highway 395 and sits near both the Hot Creek fishing area and Mammoth Mountain, potentially affecting recreation. It is also habitat for the Bi-State Sage Grouse, a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act, and holds cultural significance for local tribes.
Lynn Boulton of the Sierra Club’s Toiyabe Chapter said the project may disturb more land than the proposal claims.
Some access roads are narrow two-track trails, she said, just wide enough for small vehicles, and would need widening for drilling equipment. Slopes, turns, and pad junctions would add further disturbance. And the drill pads themselves may be larger in practice than the size listed in the original plan, meaning the total environmental impact could exceed reported estimates.
On Tuesday, the Mono County Board of Supervisors called for the highest level of environmental review for any future proposal and requested staff write a letter indicating this sentiment.
Under the California Surface Mining and Reclamation Act, Mono County retains permitting authority over mining operations that disturb more than one acre.
However, if supervisors take a strong public position on a project, they risk being disqualified from later acting as impartial decision-makers in the permitting process. Such actions could be viewed as bias, raising due process concerns. So the board was limited to this language in its call to action.
The gold drama doesn’t end there. On Tuesday, the Bureau of Land Management approved an expanded mining exploration drilling project at Conglomerate Mesa, an area about a mile west of Death Valley National Park.
K2 Gold, through its subsidiary Mojave Precious Metals, had originally proposed 120 drill holes at 30 sites with new road construction. After receiving over 14,000 mostly opposing comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, the BLM and the company limited the project to 76 drill holes at 22 sites, with no road construction and access via helicopter only.
Even reduced, environmentalists warn the impacts remain significant and fear it could be a prelude to a full-scale open-pit mine using cyanide leaching, which carries high environmental risks; a concern that also applies to KORE’s Long Valley project.
