More Top Picks Shades Sail
player ready...As a former U.S. senator and lifelong Wisconsinite, I believe deeply in our responsibility to protect special places. Today, that responsibility includes standing up for one of the most beloved — and politically underestimated — wild places in America: the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northeastern Minnesota.
In May, House Republicans championed a provision in the budget reconciliation bill that would have given away 6,000 acres of the Superior National Forest to a Chilean billionaire who has dreams of opening a toxic copper mine on the doorstep of the Boundary Waters. Fortunately, the provision was later rejected by the Senate Parliamentarian. Had that language made it through the Senate, it wouldn’t have been just an environmental disaster — it would have been a political one as well. A pending stand-alone bill by Rep. Pete Stauber, R-Minn., who authored the giveaway provision in the budget bill, seeks to grant expedited mining rights to the Chilean billionaire, threatening America’s public lands and our nation’s most visited wilderness.
The repeat users of the Boundary Waters are not coastal environmentalists. They are our Midwestern neighbors — voters from Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and North and South Dakota — who return year after year to paddle, portage and camp in one of the last truly wild places left in this country. We are not talking about just a few adventurous families. About 150,000 people experience the Boundary Waters every year, out of more than 8 million people who visit northeastern Minnesota annually, meaning millions of Midwesterners have personally experienced this national treasure.
These are battleground state voters. Undermining a place so central to their outdoor traditions and interests is just plain bad politics, in addition to being a terrible idea on the merits. Why would we ever mine in a place that is almost as much lake as forest? The 3 million-acre Superior National Forest, of which the Boundary Waters is a part, contains 20% of all the freshwater in our country’s entire 193 million-acre national forest system.
We know that Midwestern voters across the political spectrum care about protecting the environment. The University of Wisconsin at Madison’s Center for Communication & Civic Renewal conducted a poll in December to ascertain what divides or unites voters in the Midwest. The results showed that environmental issues are one of the few areas that generate strong bipartisan support among Midwesterners.
The Boundary Waters also faces a threat by the Donald Trump administration. On June 11, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins posted a callous and inaccurate tweet blithely announcing that she and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum had begun the process of undoing the 20-year copper mining ban in the headwaters of the Boundary Waters.
Rollins’ knee-jerk social media post immediately after the exclusion of the giveaway language from the budget bill reflects complete ignorance of the power of this place. The lakes and forests of the Boundary Waters support communities and businesses and enrich the lives of countless wilderness travelers.
The Boundary Waters is not some faraway preserve. It’s 1.1 million acres of forests and interconnected lakes in northeastern Minnesota. President Theodore Roosevelt recognized its unique beauty and ecological value in 1909 by establishing the Superior National Forest. This region is part of a priceless landscape of protected lands and waters that stretch across the U.S.-Canada border. From scout trips to honeymoons, family vacations to solo paddles, this wilderness is woven into the fabric of life for thousands upon thousands of Midwestern families. It is public land that belongs to all of us.
Now, that fabric is at risk. The proposed copper mines — owned by Chilean conglomerate Antofagasta — would threaten the Boundary Waters with acid mine drainage and heavy metal pollution. If that contamination happens, there’s no going back. One of the purest freshwater systems on Earth would be damaged — and it cannot be remediated once it’s poisoned.
Why would we jeopardize clean water, wildlife and a thriving recreation economy for the short-term profits of a Chilean company?
This isn’t a partisan issue. It’s about clean water and our outdoor traditions and protecting the places that reflect our values. I urge everyone who cares about our public lands to speak up.
The Boundary Waters needs us now. Let’s not look back and wish we’d done more.
Russ Feingold is a former U.S. senator from Wisconsin and chair of the Campaign for Nature’s Global Steering Committee.
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