Yes — but only for a second tier of import-dependent minerals; the top tier (graphite, gallium, manganese, niobium, tantalum) has essentially no active US mine, federal or private

Summary

Yes, real mining of import-dependent minerals is happening on federal land right now — but it is concentrated almost entirely in a second tier of import-dependent minerals (potash, uranium, lead-zinc-copper, and several near-term critical-mineral projects), not in the handful of minerals the US is most dependent on. USGS's 2026 Mineral Commodity Summaries lists at least ten mineral commodities at 100% net import reliance — arsenic, fluorspar, gallium, graphite, indium, manganese, niobium, scandium, tantalum, and yttrium/rare-earth compounds — and none of these has an active US mine of any kind, federal or private; the constraint is the absence of an economic domestic deposit, not land ownership or permitting. Where the US does have workable deposits of a highly import-reliant mineral, federal land carries most of the real activity, because so much of the mineral-rich West is federally owned: potash royalties from BLM leases in New Mexico ran about $18 million in FY2025, uranium ore has been actively hauled from the Pinyon Plain Mine on Kaibab National Forest land since early 2025, and lithium (Thacker Pass, Nevada BLM land), antimony/gold (Stibnite, Payette National Forest, Idaho), and copper (Resolution Copper, Tonto National Forest, Arizona) are all under active construction or newly approved on federal land, though none is yet in commercial production.

What "100% import reliant" actually looks like on the ground

USGS's Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 (Figure 2/3A, apparent-consumption basis, 2025 data) lists arsenic, fluorspar, gallium, graphite (natural), indium, manganese, niobium, scandium, tantalum, and yttrium (a rare-earth compound) at 100% net import reliance — the US produces none of its own consumption. For these specific commodities there is no meaningful federal-land production to report, because there is essentially no US production at all, on any land tenure: no operating US niobium or tantalum mine; no operating natural-graphite mine (some Alabama and Alaska prospects remain pre-production, mostly on private/state land); gallium and indium are recovered only as byproducts of zinc/aluminum smelting, and no US smelter currently recovers them; manganese has one advanced project (South32's Hermosa/Taylor deposit in Arizona, on patented private land inside the Coronado National Forest boundary) still years from output.

Where federal land IS carrying real, current production

• Potash (~93% import reliant): Intrepid Potash's New Mexico operations run on Bureau of Land Management federal mineral leases and generated roughly $18.2 million in federal royalty revenue in FY2025 (askamerica lands.onrr_revenues, mineral_lease_type='Potassium') — ongoing, real, and the single largest federal hardrock/leasable-mineral royalty stream in the data outside oil, gas, and coal.
• Uranium (historically ~80-95% import reliant): Energy Fuels' Pinyon Plain Mine sits on Kaibab National Forest land near the Grand Canyon; after a permitting fight and a 2024 pause tied to Navajo Nation haul-route negotiations, ore hauling to the White Mesa Mill resumed in February 2025 and continues — genuine, current federal-land extraction, not a proposal.
• Lead, zinc, copper concentrate (copper ~40% import reliant): ONRR recorded roughly $4.4 million in hardrock lead-concentrate royalties and $1.4 million in copper-concentrate royalties in FY2025 from federal hardrock leases — real but small, because most US hardrock mining (including on federal land) operates under the 1872 General Mining Law, which lets a claim holder extract minerals from public land without paying any federal royalty at all. That means ONRR's royalty data structurally undercounts actual federal-land hardrock output; the true volume of lead/zinc/copper (and any incidental critical-mineral byproducts) coming off federal claims is larger than the revenue figures alone suggest.
• Cobalt (~76% import reliant): Jervois Global's Idaho Cobalt Operations, on Salmon-Challis National Forest land, actually produced cobalt concentrate in 2022-23 — real federal-land output — before being idled in 2023 on low prices, illustrating that federal-land critical-mineral mining exists but can be economically fragile.
• Lithium (~25% import reliant but a top strategic priority): Lithium Americas' Thacker Pass project sits on BLM land in northern Nevada; construction is underway in 2026 (major equipment deliveries and grid interconnection this year) with first lithium targeted for late 2027 — under construction, not yet producing.
• Antimony/gold (antimony import reliance rose sharply after China's 2024 export controls): The Forest Service issued a final Record of Decision approving Perpetua Resources' Stibnite Gold Project on Idaho's Payette National Forest; a federal court cleared the way for construction in mid-2026, with production targeted around 2029 — approved and beginning construction, not yet producing.
• Copper (Resolution Copper, Arizona): Rio Tinto/BHP's Resolution Copper project completed its federal land exchange with the Tonto National Forest in March 2026 after a favorable appellate ruling, but commercial production remains years away pending further permitting and litigation risk.

The core finding

The pattern is a split, not a uniform yes or no. For the minerals at the very top of the import-dependence list — the true 100%-reliant commodities like graphite, gallium, manganese, niobium, tantalum, and scandium — there is no real federal-land mining because there is no real US mining of any kind; federal land ownership is not the binding constraint. For the next tier down — potash, uranium, cobalt, antimony, lithium, and copper, all still heavily import-reliant — federal land is where most of the country's actual and near-term production sits, precisely because BLM and Forest Service land covers so much of the mineralized West. Several of the highest-profile 2026 projects (Thacker Pass, Stibnite, Resolution Copper) are approved or under construction but not yet shipping product, so "real activity" today is a mix of a few genuinely operating mines (potash in New Mexico, uranium at Pinyon Plain, modest hardrock lead/zinc/copper royalties) and a larger set of federal-land projects still in construction or permitting.

Every query behind this report

5 warehouse calls ran in this session, in order. Each is reproducible against the same snapshot.

SELECT mineral_lease_type, commodity, product, COUNT(*) n, SUM(revenue) total_rev
FROM lands.onrr_revenues
WHERE mineral_lease_type = 'Hardrock'
GROUP BY mineral_lease_type, commodity, product
ORDER BY total_rev DESC
FETCH FIRST 50 ROWS ONLY

SELECT mineral_lease_type, commodity, fiscal_year, SUM(revenue) rev
FROM lands.onrr_revenues
WHERE commodity ILIKE '%potash%' OR commodity ILIKE '%uranium%' OR mineral_lease_type ILIKE '%potash%' OR mineral_lease_type ILIKE '%uranium%'
GROUP BY mineral_lease_type, commodity, fiscal_year
ORDER BY fiscal_year DESC
FETCH FIRST 30 ROWS ONLY

SELECT DISTINCT mineral_lease_type FROM lands.onrr_revenues ORDER BY 1

SELECT fiscal_year, state_name, SUM(revenue) rev
FROM lands.onrr_revenues
WHERE mineral_lease_type = 'Potassium'
GROUP BY fiscal_year, state_name
ORDER BY fiscal_year DESC
FETCH FIRST 20 ROWS ONLY

SELECT fiscal_year, commodity, SUM(revenue) rev
FROM lands.onrr_revenues
WHERE mineral_lease_type = 'Hardrock' AND commodity IN ('Lead','Zinc','Copper') AND fiscal_year >= 2020
GROUP BY fiscal_year, commodity
ORDER BY fiscal_year DESC, commodity