by Michael Howell
According to a Bitterroot National Forest press release issued March 27, the draft initial plan of operations for the Sheep Creek Mine Project submitted by US Critical Materials on December 5, 2025 has been rescinded and the company anticipates submitting a revised proposal by the end of April. The Forest will then conduct a completeness review to determine if the proposal is sufficient to conduct an environmental analysis. Once a new proposal is received, the project timeline will be updated on the FAST-41 Transparency webpage. West Fork District Ranger Dan Pliley has been unavailable for further comment and will not be back in the office until next week.
Scott Osterman, spokesperson for US Critical Materials, said that the company was scaling back and concentrating on one adit (mine entrance) and making it secure for a revised exploration project. He said it was too early yet to comment on the details of the plan, but they hope to have a new proposal together by April 22.
“In our mind it will be significantly less than the original plan,” said Osterman. “We know that people are concerned and we are aware of that. We are putting things in place so we can get more information out there by having an office in the Bitterroot and by having a project web site. These are the things we are planning on doing in the next 30 to 60 days so that the public can learn what is going on. We are committed to that, but it’s been hard up until this point because we haven’t had all the research and all the other types of things done to really tell anything. Now we are getting closer to doing that and this plan will show just exactly what that exploration step is. I think, we hope, that people will be a little bit more comfortable with things. This is a process that doesn’t happen overnight.”
“We look at it as a three-legged stool,” Osterman added. “The economy and the economic value it can bring to the Darby area, the national security side, and the environmental side. Those of us who are born and raised here in Montana do care about what happens and we are going to make sure that we take care of that.”
Leave a Reply