Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announces "America's Great Outdoors" agenda

The Obama administration has launched a new initiative to reconnect Americans, especially kids, with our country's amazing natural beauty. They're calling the initiative America's Great Outdoors, and they're looking for public input on the places that need more protection. We think the Grand Canyon should make the list.

Save the Grand Canyon!

Let Sec. Salazar know that Grand Canyon National Park deserves to be protected from the threat of mining pollution.

Click here to take action now!

Mining companies know that it’s against the law to set up operations in the Grand Canyon, or any national park for that matter. Yet, incredibly, the law does allow them to mine the land right next door to our national parks. Now, with the price of gold rising and demand for uranium growing, the mining industry is hoping to take advantage of these loopholes in the law, filing claims close enough to the Grand Canyon to threaten one of the worlds’ greatest natural treasures. 

In the last five years, mining companies have expressed the desire to mine on 800 claims within five miles of the Grand Canyon—close enough that toxic pollution from the mining process could run off into the streams that feed the Colorado River and the trails and wild lands that surround it. According to the EPA, mining waste has polluted 40 percent of the watersheds that provide Western communities with drinking water.

Environment Arizona is working to make sure that visionary protections for national parks become a reality by asking the Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar to include Grand Canyon National park in the America's Great Outdoors agenda.