Campaign To Save The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota
The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota is America’s most popular wilderness with over 250,000 visitors each year. The 1.1 million acres with over 1,000 lakes holds over 20% of all the water in the national wilderness system. From the air, the BWCAW appears to be more lake and stream than land. Some 80,000 people from around the US and the world come to camp and travel each summer by canoe without the use of outboard motors and by dog team in winter. The BWCAW links across the border with the Quetico Provincial Park of Ontario to make a canoe wilderness that is unmatched anywhere in the world. It is the land of Voyageurs and trappers of 300 years past and the homeland of the Ojibway people who migrated here for the wild rice harvest and the fishing and hunting.
Over the past 100 years, the wilderness has met many challenges from proposed dams to float planes and motor boats and remote resort development. The Boundary Waters was permanently protected in 1964 by the Wilderness Act and again in 1978 with the Boundary Waters Wilderness Act.
One provision was neglected however in these extensive protections and that was the withdrawal of mineral leases outside the wilderness but in the watershed that drains through the wilderness. That detail has lead to another great environmental effort to rectify the oversight.
In 2013 our company called a meeting of informed environmentalists in our wilderness edge town of Ely, Minnesota to discuss what had become a looming threat of sulfide ore copper and nickel mining in the watershed of the BWCAW. We formed a group that came to be known as The Campaign To Save The Boundary Waters. We opened a visitor center in Ely that summer to educate tourists and local people about this threat that could easily pollute the waters of the BWCAW. Research led us to believe that this type of mining known to the US EPA as the most polluting industry in America was just not appropriate for this water-rich ecosystem. Examples abound around the world of accidents from such mines having acid mine drainage into the ground and surface water and multiple blowouts of tailings dams rendering destruction downstream of such mines. Our livelihood and those of our employees absolutely and unequivocally depends on clean pure water throughout the canoe country. We are proud to be able in our wild lakes to be able to drink the water directly from the lake and eat the fish we catch for dinner around the campfire.
The Campaign now has grown to a full-time staff of 12 people and hundreds of volunteers across the country. Our efforts in Washington, DC have to lead to serious consideration of at least a temporary withdrawal of mineral leases with the prospect of further action to permanently ban sulfide ore mining in our watershed. We continue with our meetings in Washington every month with Congress and with the agencies like The Bureau of Land Management and the US Forest Service. The effort has been expensive and time-consuming but rewarding for our team at Piragis Northwoods Co. Our efforts will go on into the next administration unabated.
Update from 2019:
The Campaign To Save The Boundary Waters in 2019 joined with the Wilderness Society and other environmental organizations to bring a law suit against the Trump Interior Department demanding that the mineral leases re-granted to Twin Metals Mining under Trump be once again denied as they were in 2016 under the Obama White House. Our case is in federal court in Washington, D.C. We fully expect to win that case forcing the mining company to reapply for mineral leases and go thru an extensive process to regain their foothold.
The Campaign continues to work directly with the public in Minnesota and across the United States to bring political pressure on the Congress to act in favor of wilderness and as of the time of this update we have support in both the House and the Senate to demand that the Trump administration re-start the 2 year Environmental Assessment of the watershed that was unilaterally and abruptly discontinued by the US Forest Service after only 20 months. That study was likely to call for a 20 year withdrawal of all mineral leasing with the watershed of the Boundary Waters. Again, we expect to the appropriations bill in Congress with this provision will pass and be signed by the President forcing the renewal of the study.
The Campaign is now functioning nationwide with 20 full time staff, Pro Bono law firms in Washington, DC and St. Paul, Minnesota, a business coalition of outdoor companies totaling over 200 and a annual budget of over $2.4 MM. Six years into this long and hard battle we fully expect to continue until the ecosystem of the Boundary Waters and wilderness edge economy of the Ely, Minnesota area is permanently protected from the ravages of what is known as “America’s most toxic industry”, sulfide ore copper mining. Our commitment as a local retailer/outfitter in Ely is as strong as ever and our leadership has been critical in the fight. We strongly encourage other Penguins around the world to take up the fight wherever it is necessary to preserve the wild lands we all depend for our prosperity and that of the ecosystem.
Why is this case a good example of linking tourism and conservation?
Are there plans to further improve this example of tourism supporting conservation in the future?
How could this example be transferred to another protected area and knowledge be shared?
