A letter from the US miner raised hope that the jarrah forest inland from Perth would escape its strip mining for bauxite, but Alcoa is keeping its options open.
The green light for Black Mountain Energy comes just months after Federal experts said its environmental risk assessment was "limited and disjointed" and reached "largely unsupported" conclusions.
The environmental watchdog is set to remove restrictions on climate pollution in months but is much slower looking into concerns about quarantine and turtles on the Barrow Island nature reserve.
