The image above is of a part of the Bingham Canyon open-pit copper mine in Utah. (Photo courtesy of NASA Earth Observatory, Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon)
“Can you guarantee this won’t be an open-pit mine?” — Question from attendee at Hercules Metals town hall meeting, Cambridge, ID, May 13, 2026
“No.” — Chris Paul, CEO of Hercules Metals
Hercules Metals has expanded its mining exploration on the Cecil Andrus WMA and USFS public lands along Highway 71 west of Cambridge, Idaho. The combination of their leased land on the Andrus WMA and their mining claims on USFS lands to the southwest now runs about 73 kilometers (about 45 miles), on both sides of Highway 71. Hercules is the largest of the six or seven other mining companies with leases and/or claims in the area; numerous others (mostly foreign companies, like Hercules) have begun exploring the “zone,” and off-road equipment, bulldozers, drilling pads, and storage facilities have drastically increased on this important and beautiful section of public land. We didn’t hunt on the east side of 71 last season because of all the drilling and road-making activity, but we observed it from across the canyon on the west side of the road. The disturbance to the area between Brownlee Guard Station and Grade Creek was shocking from a distance. Access by foot up or down Camp Creek, one of our old favorites, is now basically closed as it is the main access point for all of the heavy equipment heading up and down that road.
What follows is my account of a site visit to the area, an aerial view from a Cessna 210, and the Hercules Town Hall meeting in Cambridge on May 13 of this year.
On the Ground
In early May, I had the good fortune to accompany Randy Fox and Jeff Abrams of the Idaho Conservation League on a drive-around of the area where Hercules has been conducting its exploratoratory drilling for copper and silver, on both the Cecil Andrus Wildlife Management Area (the “Andrus”) and National Forest Service land west of Cambridge, Idaho.
As I’ve reported before, Camp Creek, which has been closed to motorized vehicle traffic since as long as the Andrus has been the Andrus, has been Hercules’ sole entry point for its drilling. We were able to get a key to the closest nearby gate (Grade Creek, just a bit west of Camp Creek) and drove up that road. About halfway up, a little spur led to a locked gate past which sat some huge poly tanks and other material and equipment, so we pulled off and took a brief look at that area. Both Jeff and Randy were impressively knowledgeable not only about what we saw there, but also about historic mining material (there was lots of evidence of a previous — they thought maybe the 1960s or 1970s — mining operation there).
This storage area seemed neglected. Pallets of drilling “lubricants” and other material (including polyacrylamide) had obviously succumbed to at least a season of weather, with whole pallets of “grout” in bags that had broken open and begun dissolving. Other material, also on pallets, had had their cellophane wrapping blown off and — in several cases — containers of material had fallen over and spilled contents onto the ground.
We continued on through the area, stopping here and there to look at the new roads that had been bulldozed into the open hillsides, leading to drilling sites, some of which had been “reclaimed,” and some of which looked better than we expected. Most of the roads, including several we’d hunted on for years, had been dug down several feet (e.g., the one from, Camp Creek up the hill to the south, then over one of my former favorite ridges to hunt chukar). The water source for the current drill site was Camp Creek, with a decent-sized gas-powered pump sending water through a series of hoses probably about a third of a mile up the hill. I don’t know how much water a 8,000-foot drill hole requires, but it’s a fair amount. I also don’t know what the holes that penetrate existing aquifers do to those aquifers. Since most house wells in the area are drilled down about 150 feet (a deep well is maybe twice that), I can imagine that each hole that Hercules drills intersects numerous aquifers. I imagine a hydrologist could tell you what kind of impact drilling exploration has on aquifers. I do know that cross-contamination in drilling is fairly common, especially when drilling operations don’t do a good job sealing the bore holes after they’re finished. Whether anyone checks these is anyone’s guess. Chris Paul has said that one of the reasons they decided to explore Idaho for minerals was that it had some of the most lenient mining laws and regulations in the U.S.
Overall, while I was grateful to Jeff and Randy for inviting me to tag along, and to have learned a lot from each of them, it was hard to see such profound disturbance to an area that I’d spent so many amazing hours on with my dogs and my wife, in all seasons, its beauty and solitude and wildlife, and all of the undefinable yet crucial things that come with that, uninterrupted by heavy machinery.
In the Air
In mid-May, I was lucky enough to get invited by ICL to tag along on an EcoFlight over the Hercules site. I’d never heard of EcoFlight, but was impressed by everything this non-profit does. I joined Randy, Jeff, Dennis Daw (director of the USRT fish and wildlife program), and the EcoFlight pilot Chris Benson for a flight from Ontario, Oregon to the area Hercules is exploring. It was weird and a little disorienting to get my first hawk’s view of terrain I’d come to know so well from the ground. The flight didn’t yield anything surprising (our ground tour had seen to that), but accentuated the natural beauty of the area; the day was perfect for flying and the spring greenup and remnants of snow on surrounding peaks made for stunning views in every direction. Picturing an open-pit mine, like the one in Butte, Montana or the huge Bingham Canyon mine in Utah on this landscape makes me feel ill.
In the Hall
Hercules hosted a town hall meeting on May 13 in Cambridge’s Exhibit Hall. As expected, career politician Judy Boyle (of Ammon Bundy-supporting infamy, including her personal appearance in support of the Bundys’ 2016 violent and illegal take-over and occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon) introduced Hercules CEO Chris Paul by emphasizing the “national security” aspect of mining’s search for copper and silver. Boyle’s been promoting the mining exploration project west of Cambridge from the outset, but this time didn’t hawk it as a local job-providing affair. Instead, she limited her introductory comments, which confused me a bit: either she assumes she doesn’t have to try to sell the locals on the project or she knows that it won’t provide many jobs if it turns into an actual mining operation, or she knows she’s helping push the destruction of the Cecil Andrus Wildlife Management Area, mainly out of spite for the great Democratic leader of Idaho and former Secretary of the Interior.
Paul presented a brief slideshow about the project, then introduced his new tech director who explained what they’re doing up there, including showing a video by an Australian company. Several people I talked to afterward wondered why Hercules hadn’t made its own video, which probably could have been done more easily…
During his presentation, Paul referred to Hercules Metals as a local company, even though it’s Canadian, and referred to the “Property” Hercules has mining leases on in the Andrus WMA as land they owned; in fact, Hercules owns less than 100 acres of the “Property,” which encompasses about 24,000 acres. The company’s headquarters is on a 7.7-acre property in Cambridge that was recently purchased by Hercules’ owner, Anglo-Bomarc, a Vancouver-based Canadian mining company with a tax address registered in Toronto. Paul also highlighted the “extensive” financial contributions Hercules has made to about 20 local organizations, which seemed very similar to Perpetua’s PR campaign to sell to the locals farther north its controversial Stibnite Mining project. I haven’t asked any of the organizations how much Hercules gave them, but even if it’s $1,000 each (which is doubtful), that’s only $20K. Pretty cheap marketing for the “dupes” Paul called Idahoans in a podcast I shared in a previous post.
I asked the first question during the Q&A:
“Since Hercules is a Canadian company why do you keep referring to it as local or American?” He obviously didn’t appreciate being called out like that, and shifted to an immediately defensive stance.
“What’s your question?” he asked.
“Well, you’ve said you established a local workforce, but what’s in it for the Canadian company?”
“Obviously, corporations pay taxes…” He took another question.
Hercules’ marketing material, including the images on its website, foreground the natural beauty of the area, which — as I’ve written before and which all locals know — is a critical wintering ground for large herds of elk and mule deer, not to mention other game such as upland birds. I have subscribed to the company’s e-newsletters from the beginning and have attended two of its town hall meetings, and never has Chris Paul or any of Hercules’ marketing material ever mentioned the impact of mining on the area, the vast majority of which is publicly owned. At the most recent town hall, the final question was asked by a young woman. “What will be the impact of a potential mining operation on the land there?”
As I’ve heard him say before, to similar types of questions, Paul essentially said that his company is merely looking for potential deposits of copper and silver, and that it “could take years” before they know if any mining company will want to develop a mine there.
Anyone would expect him to say that. What’s disingenuous, though, about his rhetoric, especially when the company’s marketing material highlights the area’s natural beauty, is the fact that — as a mining professional — he knows probably better than anyone that the area will be destroyed.
It’s common knowledge now that we need silver and copper for more things every day. Not even considering the tremendous and accelerating lust for these metals that data centers desire, or the vast amounts needed by the military industrial complex, or the political aspects of either, “alternative” energy and other more “mundane” uses of copper and silver and other minerals that can only be taken out of the ground (recycling supplies only a fraction of our need) is, sadly, a necessary evil of our time. Rationality, though, seems even scarcer than these precious metals when it comes to the location and regulation of some of these mines. In Hercules’ case — like many others’ — environmental safeguards don’t seem as robust as they might when it comes to protecting the landscape and waterways from damage. Hercules sits directly above the Snake River, above a complex of three reservoirs on the second biggest waterway in the west. The Snake feeds the Columbia, and is already struggling with increased pollution from upstream agriculture runoff, resulting in increased algae blooms and toxicity problems that lead to more and more closures of the waterways each year. Mining operations, including exploration such as that Hercules is doing, adds pollution to an already fragile ecosystem.
In addition, most of Hercules’ activity has occurred on the Andrus, which — as previously mentioned many times — is an important wintering ground for deer, elk, and other big game. The land for the Andrus was donated by the Mellon Foundation specifically to protect these animals’ homes during the crucial winter season. Idaho’s unusually lenient mining laws, however, essentially disregard both the intent of the Andrus land donation and the fact of its essential nature to the animal residents. During my time with ICL recently, Jeff Abrams showed us a map he had borrowed from Idaho Fish & Game that showed radio collar data from mule deer and elk throughout the year; Hercules’ exploratory drilling and the development of an open pit mine would literally remove the entire neighborhood of those animals there.
The whole thing just seems like a bad idea. Even if it was the richest deposit of copper and silver in the US (it’s not), it’s too close to the Snake River, it’s on a much too tight 2-lane road that is a major recreation corridor (numerous campgrounds are used year-round on the three reservoirs along the Snake within about 30 miles), it would destroy crucial wintering range for highly prized mule deer and elk, it would eliminate crucial grazing allotments on public land (both on the Andrus and USFS land), it would definitely increase pollution in the Snake River drainage, the companies involved are not US companies and — if the history of these companies and their operation is any indication — the bulk of the workforce would not be locals, and local communities would not see any significant economic benefit. Idaho’s mining laws are a combination of outdated federal and state laws dating back as far as 1872. It’s hard to imagine any sense breaking through any of the numerous leases and claims being granted: the scale of mining today outpaces by an order of magnitude anything imagined 150 years ago.
As one attendee noted near the end of the town hall meeting, if the area were to be developed as an open pit mine, everyone in the room would probably be dead before they saw evidence of it. Chris Paul laughed.
Chirp away