Here’s how: Copper bonds to sulfide-bearing ore, which becomes waste rock in the metal’s extraction. This type of mining is notoriously harmful, yet with the transition to green energy, demand is exploding Goldman Sachs even declared copper “ the new oil.” From lithium-ion batteries and wind turbines to solar panels and electric cars (all of which call for copper), the push for more metal to power the green economy could also be pushing us toward damaging the very landscapes we’re trying to protect. In 2015, Antofagasta-a Chilean mining conglomerate-purchased Twin Metals Minnesota and proposed an underground sulfide-ore copper mine just upstream from the Boundary Waters, in the exceptionally clean Rainy River Watershed. What’s more, no sulfide-ore copper mining has ever taken place here, or anywhere in the state of Minnesota.
Though the initial 20-year leases have been renewed three times over the past 50 years, no mining has ever taken place. Since 1966, Twin Metals Minnesota has held two mineral leases along the South Kawishiwi River and Birch Lake, just 3 miles from the wilderness’s border. That’s what almost happened, and still could. “Without further protection,” Chadwick adds, “you could place America’s most toxic industry outside America’s most popular wilderness.” Though Quetico, Voyageurs and the Boundary Waters comprise over 2.2 million acres, with unprotected headwaters farther south, the entire intact wilderness remains vulnerable-and the threat of copper mining has been looming over the area for decades. Photo courtesy of the Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters.īut the wilderness designation didn’t protect the entire watershed. Johnson, protected 1,090,000 acres of this immaculate water world, and protections in 1978 went further, limiting motorized use and restricting logging and mining in designated areas. “It wasn’t until the 1964 Wilderness Act that the Boundary Waters received a wilderness designation,” explains Samantha Chadwick, associate director of Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness and the Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters. Upon Baumgartner’s first visit, this boreal maze was simply a canoe area.
Flowing north from Minnesota’s 21-mile Birch Lake-a haven for anglers, campers and paddlers-the watershed courses through the Super National Forest and into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW), Voyageurs National Park and Quetico, with 1,200-plus miles of canoe trails connecting it all.
Technically, Baumgartner’s beloved Kahshahpiwi Lake falls into Canada’s Quetico Provincial Park, but water doesn’t much care about borders, international or otherwise. “It’s so pristine, so quiet-you can just drink the damn water.” “You go anywhere in the Boundary Waters, and it’s just wilderness.” She recalls run-ins with bears, bathing beneath waterfalls, counting dozens of loons floating on the water’s gemmy surface. “Kahshahpiwi Lake is my favorite,” says the 72-year-old, picking a spot that requires three days of hard paddling from Moose Lake and a mile-long portage across fields of boulders, wetlands and virgin pine forest. The waters have been classified as nearly “ pristine.” But a proposed copper mine has threatened to change the lakeland wilderness’s landscape forever.ĭonna Baumgartner has canoed the Boundary Waters every year-minus two-since 1963. Known as the Boundary Waters, an ecosystem that stretches well into Ontario province, this region is the most-visited federal wilderness area in the country and the greatest canoe-country wilderness in the world, where countless generations have gone fishing, canoe camping, hiking, bird-watching and waterfall-chasing. Some the size of a city block, others as large as New York City’s Central Park 12 times over, the lakes are oligotrophic, drinkable and their magnificent forested surroundings a carbon sink. Here, nearly 1,175 lakes are linked to one another via maintained portages and/or direct water connections, with 1,000 more secluded in this boreal world of pine and spruce. Northern Minnesota-“sky-tinted water” in the Dakota language-is best navigated via canoe. Advocates have been fighting to keep mining away from the Boundary Waters, and now the wilderness might have its best chance for protection yet-with your help.
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