TUCSON – Obama appointee, U.S. District Judge, James Soto, ruled against Rosemont Copper Mine on July 31, on the eve of the time set for construction of the mine to begin.
The progressive sue-and-settle group, Center for Biological Diversity, filed a lawsuit to overturn the U.S. Forest Service’s 2017 decision to approve the mine and its 2013 environmental impact statement (ESA).
Native American tribes also filed lawsuits to stop the mine.
In a statement released Thursday morning, Rosemont Mine owner, Hudbay Minerals, vowed to challenge at the ruling to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The company believes that Soto misinterpreted federal mining laws and Forest Service regulations.
In 2017, the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), was exposed by biologists from the Arizona Game and Fish Department and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for misrepresenting the gender of a jaguar captured on a trail video camera in the Chiricahua Mountains in the vicinity of the Rosemont Mine site.
At that time, CBD employee Randy Seraglio claimed that that if the animal was female, there was a possibility that jaguars could have a viable population in the area. The speculation was part of an effort to stop the Mine due to its potential impact on the endangered jaguar population.
According to AZGFD, there has not been a female jaguar in Arizona in more than 50 years. The males that wander into Arizona eventually figure that out and leave, so it’s unlikely a jaguar population can establish. The other most recent jaguar sighted in Arizona, another male, was in the Santa Ritas, and that cat has not shown up on any trail cameras since September 2015. Arizona is on the extreme northern fringe of their range.
The jaguar has been protected in the U.S. as endangered under the Endangered Species Act since 1997.
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