Although international treaties are best known for
settling wars, a treaty could affect an underground gold mine
proposed just outside Yellowstone National Park. Under a 1972
international treaty known as the World Heritage Convention,
ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1973, Yellowstone was deemed a
“world heritage site.” The 136 nations that approved the treaty
agreed that “deterioration or disappearance of any item of the
cultural or natural heritage constitutes a harmful impoverishment
of the heritage of all the nations of the world.” Now, Park Service
officials are trying to learn whether the treaty obligates the
government to take special steps to stop or restrict the mine
project, even though federal mining laws do not. There is also, it
turns out, a federal law specifying how the treaty should be
carried out in the United States. It says world heritage sites must
have “such legal protections as may be necessary to ensure
preservation of the property and its environment.” Legal scholars
say that if the New World Mine is ever approved, the government
could be sued for abrogating that
responsibility.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Could a treaty block a mine?.
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