Inyo to Coso
A Newsletter from the Protect Conglomerate Mesa Coalition
Volume 12 - Summer 2024
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Conglomerate Mesa and the mining threat
Conglomerate Mesa comprises 22,500 acres of mountainous and nearly roadless public land, brimming with rich desert life and cultural history.
Its geology tells a story hundreds of millions of years old with a series of unique and complete rock layers spanning over 200 million years and helping us understand the geologic history of California. Some of this ancient rock is also mineralized with microscopic gold particles. As a result, the area has been threatened by mining explorations and proposals since the late 1980's.
The latest proposal, by K2 Gold, a Canadian mining company, and its local subsidiary, Mojave Precious Metals, threatens to build miles of new roads into the Mesa and 30 additional drill sites, totaling 120 bore holes, each up to a 1000 feet deep.
In addition, K2 Gold and a number of other private actors have been claiming vast tracks of land on the Mesa, in anticipation of selling the project to a larger mining company who would build a open pit, heap leach gold mine.
In this newsletter we will explore the Mesa and examine the impacts and scale of the proposed exploration and potential open pit mine.
First, let's get oriented...
Conglomerate Mesa is located in the high desert of the western United States, on the Eastside of the state of California
Conglomerate Mesa sits at the edge of the Mojave Desert and Great Basin, and has elevations ranging from 3,800 - 7,700 feet above sea level. To the west rises the Sierra Nevada, casting a rain shadow across the region. This confluence of ecoregions has led to a great diversity of life on Conglomerate Mesa. Vast stands of Joshua trees thrive alongside species endemic to the White-Inyo Mountain range. At least fifteen species of plants in the Conglomerate Mesa area are officially ranked as rare in California and five are globally rare.
East of the Sierra Nevada lies Inyo County. With a land area of 10,140 square miles it is the second largest County in California. It contains the highest point in the contiguous United States, Mount Whitney, at 14,505 feet above sea level. And the lowest point in North America, Badwater, at 282 feet below sea level.
Inyo County is mostly rural, with vast tracts of public land managed by the National Park Service, the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management.
Native American tribes have lived on and cared for these lands since time immemorial. Though the territories of these sovereign nations have been greatly reduced, tribal people still maintain a strong connection to the lands placed under the care of federal agencies.
Conglomerate Mesa is part of the ancestral homelands of the Paiute (Nüümü), Shoshone (Newe), and Timbisha Shoshone Nations. To this day, these tribal people visit the land for many purposes including exploration, hunting, and pinyon nut gathering.
Conglomerate Mesa lies within the Inyo Mountains - an arid mountain range just east of Payahuunadü (Owens Valley), and is surrounded by a network of protected public lands like Death Valley National Park, Inyo Mountains Wilderness, and Malpais Mesa Wilderness.
In 2016 Conglomerate Mesa was designated as part of the National Landscape Conservation System in recognition of its outstanding cultural and biological values. Part of Conglomerate Mesa was also designated as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern in 2016, one of the highest conservation designations on BLM-managed lands, which further acknowledged its unique importance. Conglomerate Mesa is also situated within the Cerro Gordo Area of Environmental Concern (ACEC), which was created to protect the cultural resources found in the area.
The closest rural communities to Conglomerate Mesa are Darwin, Keeler, Lone Pine and Olancha. Many people in these communities have expressed strong opposition to K2 Gold's mining proposals, staging protests, writing letters and making their voices heard for the protection of Conglomerate Mesa.
Further afield, tens of thousands of people throughout the United States have expressed their opposition to mining this unique and beautiful area.
Conglomerate Mesa can only be approached from the east via two rough 4WD roads. The Mesa itself and the lands to the west, are a vast roadless area which can only be explored on foot.
The historic Keeler-Death Valley Trail winds its way across the Mesa, a reminder of a time when explorers, on foot and with pack animals, ventured across these lands.
And there you see Conglomerate Mesa!
The snow-covered crest of the Sierra Nevada is visible in the background, with Patsiata (Owens Lake) between the two ranges.
In this video: Kathy Bancroft and Jeremiah Joseph from the Lone Pine Paiute Shoshone Tribe and Jaime Lopez Wolters, Desert Lands Organizer with Friends of the Inyo, explain what is at stake.
What makes Conglomerate Mesa so special
An intact landscape
Conglomerate Mesa has a rich human history, but remains largely unimpacted by modern development. There are few roads or trails though much of the terrain is gentle enough to be traveled on foot.
Rich geologic history
Look closely at the rocks of Conglomerate Mesa and you will find signs of another time when the land was inundated with water and marine life prevailed. A series of unique and complete rock layers spans over 200 million years and helps us understand the geologic history of California. There are fossil beds in this sequence that can be dated by the unique fossils within them: fusulinids (plankton with calcite shells), conodonts, and corals. Three new genera and 12 new species of the fusulinids are endemic to the Conglomerate Mesa area—found nowhere else.
Endemic Plants
Inyo rock daisy (Perityle inyoensis)
Found nowhere else in the world, these aromatic daisies prefer calcareous rock outcrops in the southern Inyo Mountains. They flower in the hot months of July and August when most other plants are dormant and are a major food source for visiting insects.
The Inyo rock daisy has been designated a threatened species under the California Endangered Species Act.
Joshua tree refugia
Dense Joshua tree woodlands are located to the west and south of the summit. Scientists predict this is one of the few places in California where Joshua trees will persist through the next 80 years of climate change.
In this video: Botanist Maria Jesus explains the importance of Conglomerate Mesa for the survival of Joshua trees, as climate change threatens to make the southern end of their range uninhabitable.
The Mining Threat to Conglomerate Mesa
K2 Gold's first round of exploration in 2020 included 7 drill sites, with equipment and personnel brought in by helicopter. The project exceeded the maximum allowable disturbance footprint of 0.2 acre.
K2 Gold latest exploration proposal aims to build several miles of new roads to reach 30 drill sites with a total of 120 boreholes, each up to 1000 ft deep. The total allowable disturbance would be 15 acres.
For road access, MPM's mining exploration proposal distinguishes between "Overland Travel" (orange) and "Constructed Road" (red).
The bulldozing of new access roads into a currently roadless area would cause immense damage, as would overland travel. The road construction and vehicle traffic would kill local flora and disturb wildlife. Vehicle tires would introduce invasive plant seeds and create hotspots that can spread across the Mesa.
The Protect Conglomerate Mesa campaign has undertaken an ongoing effort to survey all the Joshua trees within 15 meters of the proposed new road. With only a portion of the road surveyed, the survey has already identified 238 Joshua trees that could be affected by the exploration project.
(Click the points on the map to see individual Joshua trees)
K2 Gold's latest exploration proposal, though limited in scale, will cause significant and lasting damage to the southern end of Conglomerate Mesa.
Of even greater concern, are K2 Gold's future plans for the area, which they have outlined in maps and spoken about at public meetings.
The black outline on the map is what K2 Gold calls their "Mojave Property". The terminology used exemplifies the mindset of ownership they have over land which is public and should be accessible to all.
Over the last several years K2 Gold and a small group of private investors have laid claim to over 14,000 acres of land on and around Conglomerate Mesa.
The goal of this massive land grab, along with getting positive test results from their exploratory drilling, is to create an attractive portfolio to sell to a large mining company, which will then aim to build a large-scale, open-pit, cyanide heap leach gold mine.
In this video: Using footage from other mines and an animated fly-through, Kris Hohag, Bishop Paiute Tribe, and Michael Prather, Eastern Sierra Audubon, explain a large-scale, open-pit, cyanide heap leach gold mine on Conglomerate Mesa could look like
You can help protect Conglomerate Mesa! Make your voice heard!
In the near future, the BLM will be coming out with its Environmental Impact Statement. At that time, we encourage you to submit a comment in support of Conglomerate Mesa.
To stay informed and be alerted when the comment period opens please:
In this final video: Kathy Bancroft, Lone Pine Paiute Shoshone Tribal Historic Preservation Officer and Jaime Lopez Wolters, Desert Lands Organizer for Friends of the Inyo explain the kind of comments that will be helpful to protecting Conglomerate Mesa
