In February, England’s Prince Andrew had the nerve to visit our beautiful state of Arizona to promote a polluting, destructive, British copper mine here. Sen. John McCain recently sponsored land-swap legislation in the Senate giving the Brits 3,025 acres of U.S. Forest Service land and exempting that mine from most U.S. environmental, cultural and religious protection laws!
It would obliterate multiple American Indian sacred sites and habitat of an endangered cactus and a number of National Audubon Society ”red alert” threatened birds. At the ”Apache Leap” sacred site, Apache warriors jumped to their deaths rather than be taken by the U.S. Cavalry. Apaches today visit the site to honor them. Would Americans allow a copper mine or oil refinery to destroy and pollute Gettysburg, or Antietam battlefields? McCain’s mine would consume huge amounts of water from Arizona’s rapidly vanishing Lake Mead.
The Maricopa Audubon Society, Sierra Club, Arizona Wildlife Federation, San Carols Apache, White Mountain Apache, Camp Verde, Hualapai and Hopi tribes oppose this affront to mankind and our planet.
McCain, in an Arizona Republic op-ed on Nov. 11, 1996, piously wrote, ”Have Republicans abandoned their roots as the party of Theodore Roosevelt, who maintained that government’s most important task, with the exception of national security, is to leave posterity, a land in better condition that they received it.”
Prince Andrew represents British money, namely [that of] Rio Tinto, the world’s largest and richest mining company. Who does Sen. McCain represent?
– Robert Witzeman
Conservation ChairMaricopa Audubon SocietyPhoenix