News Roundup: Mining law reform?

Plus: Aridification Watch; Tragedy of the Commons; and more

A diagram of the Gold King and surrounding mining claims from 1917.

In April 1887, a man named Olaf Arvid Nelson, aka The Mighty Swede, staked a 1,500-foot by 300-foot lode mining claim on public domain land on the slope of Bonita Peak in the mountains of Southwestern Colorado. It was a painless process: He simply put a marker in the ground at the appro…