For more than 40 years I have been an annual visitor to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northern Minnesota. For many of those years I have helped organize and guide junior high students on week-long canoe adventures into this pristine wilderness environment. The BWCA has been protected as a national wilderness area since 1964. Despite hundreds of thousands of visitors annually, including Scouts, church groups and outdoor enthusiasts, the millions of forested acres and countless crystal clear lakes remain much the same as they did following the great glacial period. As one student wrote in his journal, “The water in these lakes is so pure it tastes like paradise as it passes your lips.”

Recent actions by Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke representing the Trump administration have placed the wild natural heart and soul of the BWCA at risk. Steps have been taken and environmental impact studies downgraded to allow a Chilean mining company with a disastrous pollution record to open a dangerous copper sulfide mining operation in the watershed of canoe country.

Concerned citizens, contact your legislators and tell them to protect this one-of-a-kind wilderness treasure. Future generations deserve the opportunity to experience such grandeur.