Next to Joshua Tree National Park, a mining company is staking a claim

An Australian company has launched a rare earths mining project just outside Joshua Tree National Park in critical desert tortoise habitat, an area the company’s director refers to as an “emerging heavy rare earth district.”

The company, Dateline Resources Ltd., says that historical sampling of the area in the Pinto Mountains south of Twentynine Palms found enrichment in elements key to powering electric vehicles, wind turbines and defense systems.

The United States depends heavily on China for its supply of these critical minerals, a major national security vulnerability the Trump administration has sought to address through a series of regulatory changes and financial incentives aimed at shoring up domestic production.

The desert tortoise, as seen in Music Valley in the Pinto Mountains, is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act due to habitat loss and predation.

(Gary Coronado / For The Times)

The project is in its early stages, and it’s unclear whether further testing will confirm the presence of rare earth elements across a broad enough area to warrant extracting them. The site is roughly 100 miles southwest of the nation’s only fully functional rare earths mine — Mountain Pass operated by MP Materials, in which the U.S. Department of Defense holds a 15% stake.

It’s also steps from Joshua Tree National Park, one of the nation’s most beloved desert getaways where about 3 million people visit annually. The 1,200-square-mile park and the public lands that surround it are home to sensitive plants and wildlife that environmentalists say would be harmed by a major mining project that could deplete water supplies, draw traffic and generate toxic waste.

“This is truly one of the most iconic landscapes in America,” said Chance Wilcox, California desert program manager for the National Parks Conservation Assn., as he stood atop a rocky slope within the project footprint on Friday.

Beside him, a wooden stake marked the corner of a mining claim. About 100 feet away, a metal post denoted the park’s boundary. In the valley below sat the fee booth for the east entrance.

If mining were to go ahead here, visitors would likely be able to see the activity while driving into the park, Wilcox pointed out. “It just emphasizes this company’s blatant disregard for our nation’s crown jewels,” he said.

Dateline did not return messages seeking comment on the project. The company also operates the Colosseum Mine in the nearby Mojave National Preserve, which the Trump administration has touted as pivotal to its efforts to develop a homegrown critical minerals supply chain.

Dateline first announced the venture — the Music Valley heavy rare earths project — late last month, saying it had acquired 57 claims totaling 1,140 acres and had also invested $1 million in Fermi Critical Minerals Inc., an American company that holds uranium and rare-earths projects in multiple western states. Dateline later broadened the footprint by staking an additional 969 claims covering 19,380 acres, a subsequent release states.

Twentynine Palms Highway looking west runs through downtown on Friday in Twentynine Palms, Calif.

(Gary Coronado / For The Times)

The company now holds claims over a roughly 32-square-mile area, the vast majority within the Bureau of Land Management’s jurisdiction.

U.S. Geological Survey geologists first identified rare earth mineralization in the Music Valley area in 1954, with sampling reporting enrichment in dysprosium, terbium, yttrium and ytterbium, Dateline Resources said in a press release. The company is now training modern exploration techniques on outcroppings of a 1.8-billion-year-old type of metamorphic rock called Pinto gneiss.

While rare earths will be the primary focus, exploration will also assess the potential for gold mining — the area is dotted with old, small-scale adits and shafts.

The project is located in what’s known as an area of critical environmental concern. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has deemed the sweeping landscape to be crucial to the survival of the Mojave desert tortoise, which is endangered in California thanks to a stew of threats including development, disease, raven predation and climate change.

The land abutting the Pinto Mountains Wilderness is also home to badgers, bighorn sheep and Mojave fringe-toed lizards. Massive yuccas and barrel cacti stud its steep slopes.

A chuckwalla lizard suns itself on a rock in the Pinto Mountains.

(Gary Coronado/For The Times)

On Friday, desert iguanas and whiptails scampered across an access road, portions of which wind through the national park. A chuckwalla sunned itself on a boulder. Nearby, a desert tortoise had emerged from its burrow to munch on some grass — a rare sight that elicited a whoop of joy from Wilcox. “This is a really special place,” he said.

If the area proves to be a valuable source of heavy rare earth elements, it would be significant as the U.S. has none, said Daniel O’Connor, co-founder and chief executive of Rare Earth Exchanges, a website that covers the global rare earths market. Mountain Pass primarily produces light rare earth elements, which are typically more abundant.

“Our entire war machinery — missiles, radar, fighter jets — all need these heavy rare earths,” O’Connor said.

Still, he said, even if the U.S. were to start producing heavy rare earths, the country would likely remain reliant on China to process them — a complex, multi-stage undertaking that involves chemically separating the elements from ore. Companies controlled by the Chinese treasury currently separate and refine an estimated 90% of the world’s supply of rare earth elements, and about 90% of the specialized magnets they are used to create are also manufactured in China, he said.

A mural illustrating miners in the Dirty Sock Camp is painted on a wall in downtown Twentynine Palms, Calif.

(Gary Coronado / For The Times)

O’Connor described the Music Valley project as early-stage and speculative, pointing to a mining tradition dating back to the Wild West in which prospectors tout samples that show heavy concentrations of minerals in a bid to loosen investors’ wallets. There’s no way to know how widespread or systematic those concentrations are without technical reports disclosing a project’s mineral contents and quality, he said. Dateline does not yet appear to have released any such report, which are industry standard, he said.

Rare earths mining typically involves pulling out ore with jackhammers or dynamite and grinding it down before chemically treating it — processes that consume a lot of energy, generate toxic waste and can unleash radiation that’s often present in the ore, he said.

“It’s hard to think of a worse place for a massive industrial project than sensitive desert tortoise habitat on the very edge of Joshua Tree National Park,” wrote Brendan Cummings, conservation director for the Center for Biological Diversity, in an email.

A buildout of the claims could end public access to the area and permanently scar the landscape, drawing traffic and light pollution and harming springs and groundwater stores, he said. Given those potential impacts, he is skeptical that the developers could lawfully be granted the necessary federal, state, and local approvals to proceed.

Conservationists also point to Dateline’s history operating the Colosseum Mine as a source of concern, saying the company flouted National Park Service rules and damaged the surrounding landscape.

“They don’t respect public lands, national parks or the law, so there’s every reason to be deeply concerned about this proposal,” said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), the ranking member on the House natural resource committee who said the project “has red flags waving in every way.”

“We do need domestic and critical minerals sourced from friendly countries and responsible actors,” he added, “but it doesn’t mean we need them everywhere or at any cost.”