By Tony Davis | Arizona Daily Star
The Coronado National Forest promoted “exclusion, rather than inclusion” by refusing requests from the Tohono O’odham nation and the Fish and Wildlife Service to share a draft copy of the Rosemont Mine biological opinion, Tribal Chairman Edward Manuel wrote to the forest’s supervisor.
The Forest Service said it declined to release the draft to the tribe, the Environmental Protection Agency and “other agencies and parties” that had asked for it, in part because officials felt parts of the draft would need to change. Also, letting other parties comment would have also taken significant extra time when completion of the biological opinion was on a tight legal deadline, the Forest Service said in its statement to the Star.
