Hercules Metals sent this press release today (July 30, 2026), announcing the addition of a team of (non-American) mining operations folks. I’m no expert, but it looks like Hercules is ramping up the exploration phase (which is how they sold it to the locals in Cambridge, with the carrot of jobs and other community benefits) to an actual mining operation.
If you read the press release, there is not a single word about the impact of an open-pit mine (or any other form of mineral extraction) on the landscape, the public land, or the community. Idaho law allows what they’re doing, but anyone who uses that land — whether it’s ranchers with grazing allotments, big game or bird hunters, or other recreationists — knows that first, they won’t be able to use it ever again, second, that it will poison the Snake River irreparably, and third, that the way of life championed by Cambridge and the “Upper Country” will be forever lost.
Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me I’m being stereotypically alarmist. Tell me I’m a communist. Tell me that the donation of the bulk of the public land this operation will destroy wasn’t really intended to protect crucial wintering ground for deer and elk. Tell me I’m smoking something. Any of that would be preferable to what seems to be coming.
Chirp away