Wilderness Perspectives
We cannot afford to get this wrong - Walter Mondale
Nov 16, 2017
The commitment of Minnesotans to protect the land and waters that are now part of our Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness began in 1902. Every generation of Minnesotans since has been called to this area’s defense. Today’s threat dwarfs them all.
Beginning in 2013, business owners, sportsmen and women and other citizens presented federal agencies with overwhelming evidence of the harm to the Boundary Waters if sulfide-ore copper mining were allowed in its watershed.
Minnesotans understand that we cannot afford to get this wrong. Will we continue Minnesota’s commitment that began more than a century ago and take steps to ensure that the Superior remains a healthy multiuse National Forest?
Or will we allow the destruction of thousands of acres of these beloved public lands, just upstream from the Boundary Waters, by permitting a single-use industrial hard-rock mining district, with the inevitable acid mine drainage that would seriously harm aquatic ecosystems downstream? The watershed of the Boundary Waters is simply the wrong place for this kind of mining.
We must do what Minnesotans before us have done: defend the wilderness.
We must be true to the Boundary Waters and the people who depend on it.
Sincerely,
Vice President Walter Mondale
