The Biden administration has put a pause on plans to erect a copper mine in Arizona on land known as Oak Flat, a site sacred to the San Carlos Apache and other Indigenous nations in the area.
The U.S. Forest Service has told a federal court it is not sure when an environmental impact statement could be approved, an action which would set off the land swap allowing Resolution Copper, a British-Australian company owned by Rio Tinto and BHP, to continue with the development of the mine. The statement had been promised for this spring, but the agency now doesn't have a set timeline.
