Featured Image Credit: Alex Falconer
The back-and-forth over copper-nickel mining on the edge of the world-renowned Boundary Water Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA) continues. On June 11, Brooke Rollins, who heads the USDA, posted on X to announce the current presidential administration’s support for developing new mines in Northern Minnesota, where in 2023, the U.S. Department of the Interior had outlawed all mining activity to “protect and preserve the fragile and vital social and natural resources, ecological integrity, and wilderness values.”
“We are initiating the process to cancel the mineral withdrawal in the Rainey River watershed on the Superior National Forest,” wrote Rollins. After careful review, including extensive public input, the US Forest Service has enough information to know the withdrawal was never needed.”
Since then, other officials have announced their support for reinstating Twin Metals’ leases, and in July, Deputy Secretary of the Interior Katharine MacGregor issued a legal opinion that negated the Biden Administration’s cancellations of the leases.
The BWCA comprises over 1 million acres of forests, lakes, and streams. The area is most well-known for its wilderness fishing and camping opportunities, but, according to Matthew Schultz, program manager for Sportsmen for the Boundary Waters, the area is also home to unique wingshooting opportunities for ruffed and spruce grouse as well as migratory waterfowl.
“A lot of people don’t realize that the wild rice numbers in and around the Boundary Waters are better than anywhere else in the Midwest,” he tells Split Reed. “During certain periods of the migration, we get some pretty significant numbers of waterfowl dumping in here. If you’re willing to do a little bit of work to hunt in the wilderness, it can be very productive.”
Because the wilderness designation prohibits motorized transport, the classic way of waterfowl hunting within the Boundary Waters involves packing in a handful of decoys in on a canoe. Hunters search for pockets of two or three acres of wild rice near timber and set up on the edge of the two types of habitats. Schultz says that the primary birds he and his buddies get are mallards, teal, and Canada geese, though they also encounter other species. Hunters also use motorized transport to do similar hunts on the edge of the wilderness designation.
Both types of hunting could be negatively impacted by the potential greenlighting of permits for a copper-nickel mine proposed by Twin Metals, a subsidiary of a Chilean mining company. According to a 2013 study, increased sulfide levels caused by sulfide-ore copper mining are known to impair wild rice production and, in some cases, harm or destroy it. The rice not only provides good places to hunt, but it also holds ducks in the state, where annual wild rice surveys are important barometers for waterfowl hunting success.
“We’re not necessarily just talking about catastrophic events,” says Schultz. “We’re talking about years and years and years of historical mining that’s already had a significant impact on wild rice numbers in and around the Boundary Waters. From our perspective, the concept of adding another mine—historically the most environmentally degrading possible version of a mine—upstream from the Boundary Waters, AKA one of the best intact wild rice habitats in the world, doesn’t make sense.”
“Wild rice in northeast Minnesota is everything,” adds Schultz. “It’s the bedrock of the entire ecosystem…no matter what you like to hunt or fish. Waterfowl is a good microcosm of that story.”