FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Contact: Libby London (612) 227-8407
March 25, 2025
Dear reporters and editors,
Late Thursday afternoon, President Trump signed an Executive Order titled “Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production,” which puts America’s public lands, including protected, special places such as the Boundary Waters, at imminent risk of development from mining. The Order fast-tracks domestic mining on federal lands, ordering that the primary use of any federal lands with mineral deposits should be mining.
“Under the guise of national security, the Trump Administration has taken its next step toward dismantling vital protections for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and its watershed. By taking the extreme step of weaponizing Cold War-era powers to prioritize mining on all public lands – which includes federally designated Wilderness Areas, national forests, national parks, wildlife refuges, and more – the administration has thoroughly demonstrated its commitment to sacrificing America’s public lands for corporate gain,” said Ingrid Lyons, Executive Director of Save the Boundary Waters.
Outdoor Life writes:
“The latest order would also subsidize mining companies while reducing public input to reopen past projects — including a mine near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
This should be alarming to conservationists and wilderness advocates. Because in addition to putting critical areas like the Boundary Waters and Bristol Bay back in the crosshairs, the administration’s extraction-first approach could dramatically shift what our public lands look like and how we use them.
There are really three main thrusts to this executive order,” Dan Hartinger, senior director of agency policy for the Wilderness Society, tells Outdoor Life. “Job one is to open new places to mining. Job two is to subsidize mining in those places. And job three is to ram through individual projects regardless of public input or what the science says….
One major issue with this executive order is how broad it is, Hartinger says. The order could include lands already protected from mining, such as public land near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and other lands with high recreational or wildlife habitat value, which have historically been managed for multiple uses.
The Biden Administration effectively halted the current plans by Twin Metals, a Chilean subsidiary, to build a copper-nickel mine just south of the BWCA in 2023 by placing a 20-year moratorium on all mining there. But Hartinger and others say the recent executive order lays the groundwork for reversing that action and re-opening the door to Twin Metals’ mine.
This executive order threatens all of America’s iconic landscapes — including the Boundary Waters,” executive director of Save the Boundary Waters Ingrid Lyons tells OL in an emailed statement. “We will continue to track this and the several other pathways this Administration is using to undermine science, the law, and the will of the people on the issue of protecting the Boundary Waters — America’s favorite and now most threatened Wilderness area.”