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No rziót adopt a new attitude with respect to prospecting parrits or lease applications. The new attitake must acs: (1) that all prospactir; zerits will be succesful and result in a lossc, (2) all leases will be mined, (3) no lease or prospecting permit will be issued unless there is a compelling reason for thing so, not that there is no reason to cacy the regest, and (4) we must convince the Secretary that issuance of the requestad prospecting permit or lease is the correct and proper thing to do and very nearly the only thing to do.

7. fa! pruckstions about what not to do. (1) Do not send in a request for processing a few prospecting pamit applications when you have many ror in the wings waiting to be sent in for the same mineral in the sa08 aras. (2) Do not send in a requast for a lease renal and suddenly "discover" a second lease with terms which will require renal 8 year later and the boundaries of the two leases are common, particularly if roth leases being owns and operated by the same company and botis Leases are considered the saxe kine.

Several proposals are being made suggesting that responsibility for issuing prospecting permits and cartain small fringe acreage leases be restored to the BLA. We will continue in that effort but in the mantime your support of this meroranda vill demonstrate to the Sacratary that the EX can and shoulċ again be entrusted with the responsibility.

Mr. CRAIG. The reason I think it's important is because we are debating this morning an old law.

Many of you have said for the record that withdrawal of public lands has been caused by this law, but the activity of ownership of surface. Therefore, we have examined over the years another alternative, and that was leasing. I'm glad to see you strike, or attempt to strike some middle ground.

I do not hold to your argument that it was the 1872 Mining Law that caused it. There were political interests who used it as an excuse to withdraw.

Now all of a sudden we find that in leasing there were other political reasons for using the leasing tool for a purpose of not leasing, and there were political reasons behind this statement as well as there were maybe logistical reasons and all other kinds of things.

The bottom line is it appears that neither work all that well at times. The question is leasing. No, that has its problems. Obviously, by the decision of the Secretary of the Interior you can literally waive a law or stop it and stop its process.

If you wish to be obstructive you can prolong the process and make it so costly that you can slow down or stop the 1872 process. One of the things we find before this committee on a constant basis when we are looking at lands for withdrawal, and wilderness is a good example, is we have the U.S. Geological Survey come before us with as much data as they can muster, and it is sometimes solely inadequate in relation to the known or suspected mineral deposits within a public area.

Nine times out of ten this committee totally ignores that testimony and goes on and draws the boundary it wishes to draw based on the politics of the issue.

Now I guess my concern is as we review the 1872 law and coupled with your statement, and I recognize some of the alternatives you're trying to approach, and I would hope they would work if we were to get there, I question whether we can get there under any scenario as long as the politics exist today and the mind set exists today that you can't have both and you have to exclude one.

I guess that's what frustrates me so when I hear leasing as an alternative and we know that with the signature of a Secretary's pen it can be stopped. That's politics, or we can take the 1872 law and withdraw as we have done continually and we can use it as an excuse and that's politics.

Now I'm not going to question the validity of that politics. Sometimes I agree with it and sometimes I don't agree with it, and I think, as you've all mentioned, parks and other withdrawals, some wilderness areas, obviously the arguments have been valid and a majority can agree. But it has also been used as a very successful took to halt.

I'm not sure you have given us an alternative this morning that would be able to thread its way through the political morass of the public land debate of today that would allow a responsible responsive, ongoing mining industry to explore and to ultimately develop. One other point I would like to have you respond to. You talk about subsurface patenting for a limited period of time for a specific mining activity. So then the question is when do you determine

the exhausting of a mineral, the time to exit the patent and base all of your economies on that when we find today through technology that we can revisit mining locations, not only to extract more mineral from past extraction or to broaden the scope of a mining operation because of new technology.

When is that determined? How do you write a law that says that a mineral has been exhausted or that there are not additional values to that particular property that may be worth retaining because I assuming from what you're saying that you're talking about a reasonably fixed period of time and a process of determination.

Mr. STAHR. Let me take the first crack, please, sir, and then I'll ask John to add to this, and Dale if he wishes.

I think the test would be is mining going on at the end of the 20 years or 30 years, whatever term you fix. If it's still being mined, then the life of the patent should be extended. If it's stopped, that's the best test I can think of that they have given up. And when they do-

Mr. CRAIG. May I interject. Is the stoppage because of a lack of resource continuing to be available or the economics of the market?

Mr. STAHR. If it's stopped, it's stopped for either reason.

Mr. CRAIG. OK.

Mr. STAHR. And if later economics, for example, come into play and new technology is developed so that that operation is worth taking up again, there is no reason why a new claimant shouldn't go in there and do it, or the old one if he is still around, but he shouldn't have a perpetual right to sit on it.

Mr. CRAIG. You would draw a line then with no perpetual right? Mr. STAHR. Right.

Mr. CRAIG. There would have to be a clear line of determining an exiting of the patent.

Mr. LIVERMORE. I would like to comment on that because I don't completely agree with Dr. Stahr on that. We have talked about that a lot, and I think the party who originally had the patent should have some protection therein, and I think that could be taken care of by if he had lost the patent presumably and after spending a considerably lot of money on this property, then if some other party came along and wanted to resume mining there, I would think the initial party would have to have some right, some kind of a first refusal right.

Mr. CRAIG. You're talking, Mr. Livermore, about some residual right.

Mr. LIVERMORE. Some residual right that he could back in to the property which he had had originally. I think that would be a fairer provision.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. Mr. Congressman, we have a great deal of debate within the Foundation on this particular issue, and I've held out very strongly for, you know, not having a specific period, 1 year, and then stop. And I think there is general agreement that as long as you are producing either in commercial quantities or whatever test you would use, it would continue.

But, also, it would continue, and I use the term "constructive production," if, as today, the price of copper is such that nobody is going to mine copper and lose money.

Mr. CRAIG. But we know there is still a lot of copper available. Mr. ZIMMERMAN. Right, we know that it's there, and there ought to be something in the law that would permit that claim to continue treated as constructive production because it's still there and one day when the price goes back up it will be mined and the mine will be open.

Mr. CRAIG. So you're talking about some degree of market test, or could we call it that based on, let's say

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. Or a prospective mine. Knowing, you know, that the market has been up here at one point like in copper, and it's down here now, but it's going to go back up there someday. Mr. CRAIG. We hope.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. Well, at least I'm confident that it will. But as a postscript, by the way, to what you were saying, Mr. Congressman, it's so true. And John and I debated this back in the years when he was in the Department and I was there with respect to wilderness and you talk about minerals.

We sat around a table where a forester could tell you down to the last board feet how much was there. The Range Con. could tell you down to the last animal month how much it would support, and the recreational people would tell you how many visitor days. The mineral person, myself, sitting there, as soon as they said I think there is something there without knowing specifically, that was the end of it. It was like you say, it was a political thing.

One other thing that is very interesting is when the military lands bases up here for renewal, an interesting thing that just points out what you were saying, the lands were recommended to be opened, and this is where we are talking about Nellis Air Force Base and others, they were recommended to be opened under the Mineral Leasing Act, but they were recommended to be closed under the Mining Law. The reason? Not because of surface patents, but because it was contaminated with explosives and things like that.

And I argued if it's contaminated for the Mining Law, why isn't it contaminated for the Mineral Leasing Act? Oh, but that's discretionary, which meant we have already decided we are not going to lease it either, but we are going to have the law passed so that it says it is open under the Mineral Leasing Act.

Mr. CRAIG. We have to find a good excuse and create a subterfuge.

Mr. ZIMMERMAN. Right, precisely.

Mr. CRAIG. Gentlemen, thank you all very much for your testimony. It was very, very informative.

Mr. RAHALL. Thank you, gentlemen.

Our second panel is composed of the Minerals Exploration Coalition, John G. Hill, chairman and Geoffrey G. Snow and Mr. David R. Crombie, president and CEO, Rayrock Yellowknife Resources, Limited.

Gentlemen, we have your prepared testimony and it will be made part of the record, and we would ask that you summarize in five minutes or less.

You may proceed.

PANEL CONSISTING OF JOHN HILL, CHAIRMAN OF THE MINERALS EXPLORATION COALITION; GOEFFREY G. SNOW, MINERALS EXPLORATION COALITION; AND DAVID R. CROMBIE, PRESIDENT AND CEO, RAYROCK YELLOWKNIFE RESOURCES, LTD.

Mr. HILL. Mr. Chairman, I am John Hill, chairman of the Minerals Exploration Coalition. I am an exploration geologist and I have had some 25 years experience in exploration geology throughout the United States.

Before I start my comments, I would like to make a brief comment on something Mr. Leshy said before.

I had an exploration program scheduled for northern California which I terminated for the very reason that Mr. Leshy said, claims that marijuana was being grown. It was a hazard to my geologists to send them in that area to stake claims because of that problem. However, I'll go on with my testimony.

The Mineral Exploration Coalition represents companies and individuals actively engaged in exploration of hardrock minerals. We are pleased to be here to offer our comments on the operation of the 1872 Mining Law.

The primary issue that MEC has been addressing is access to public lands for exploration. Historically most minable mineral deposits have been discovered on Federal land. These discoveries were made by and large because of the incentives of free enterprise, the multiuse concept for public lands and the guarantees of the 1872 Mining Law.

Part of our concern is the administration of the 1872 Mining Law and regulations affecting it. MEC has been an active participant in issues affecting the Mining Law since 1978. We have petitioned our members to learn how each felt about the mining law and discovered that a broad consensus exists over what provisions of the law are essential for continued exploration.

You've already heard them mentioned before. They are self-initiation, access to public domain to seek and acquire mineralized areas, tenure to the mineralization located and the concept of due diligence.

I'll briefly describe what we understand these elements to be.

Concerning self-initiation, unlike oil, coal and some other leasable materials, hardrock ores occur in very small obscure bodies in a multitude of geologic settings. For this reason it is necessary for the hardrock explorationists to develop a conceptual model of where he might find a particular ore and to physically walk the ground to look for clues to that ore's presence.

The broad scale conceptual exploration utilized by oil or coal geologists just has not worked for hardrock minerals.

Self-initiation is a mechanism that taps the creativity of the explorationists and gives them the ability to explore on public domain for ores. This concept is in reality the fundamental building of the 1872 Mining Law. There is no Government substitute for its efficiency. It is what enabled the prospectors and geologists to