Fighting for Canoe Country...Again

Call to Action to stop another tactic to put a copper-sulfide mine in the BWCA watershed. The vote is tomorrow. This affects ALL public land, not just Minnesota.

South Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, August 2024.

First of all, I’ve had an unexplained surge of subscribers lately. Welcome! I typically try to talk about conservation issues and veteran issues. For more about what I’m trying to do here with my voice, please go find my very first Angry Shmo post from over a year ago, where I try to explain how I’m turning rage into action.

Speaking of action, I try to include a Call to Action in every post where I make it easy for you to take action on topics I care about. There are a lot of urgent issues in the world, including right here in Minnesota where I live. People are having their Constitutional rights trampled by our own federal law enforcement agencies because of how they look and speak. It’s a heckuva time to be alive.

But while we have been thrown into chaos, there are important issues that MAGA foot soldiers are trying to sneak through congress to screw you over. This one is also urgent, since the House may be voting on it tomorrow. I’ll give you the links first, and the short explanation after. If you don’t already have your own Rep and Senators’ numbers in your phone, here’s an opportunity to figure that out and do it. Everybody’s got a phone in their pocket. Use it for something besides doomscrolling.

CALL TO ACTION: Immediately contact your elected Representative in the House and tell them to vote NO on House Joint Resolution 140 (HJR 140).

Here are some resources to make that easier for you:

Email form letter

Congressional Switchboard Phone Number: (202) 224-3121

Short Explanation

My Republican Congressman, Rep. Pete Stauber introduced HJR 140. It’s an unprecedented use of something called the Congressional Review Act to reverse the Public Land Order 7917 which placed a 20-year mining moratorium on 225,000 acres surrounding the BWCA. MAGA is using this shiny new CRA toy to circumvent the exhaustive processes directed by the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976. When you make a public land policy, you are required by law to back up that policy with science and public comments. 675,000 public comments were submitted about this mining moratorium and over 95% of them were in favor of the mining moratorium.

Stauber, who I am starting to think really dislikes his own district and the American public, claims that when this moratorium was implemented there was a technicality that was skipped when the order was communicated to Congress. The CRA requires that any new rule you want to overturn has to be overturned within 60 days. Well, seizing on that technicality, he resubmitted the 2023 order to Congress this month using what he claims is the correct method. That way, he can use the CRA to reverse the mining ban within “60 days” with a simple majority vote, without public commentary required by FLPMA, and immune from a filibuster.

He is overriding science and the overwhelming will of the public on a technicality.

This is what I love about Stauber. If it’s a technicality, one might think he could fix the technicality via legislation. But no, for a one time injection of cash for a Chilean mining company that will refine the mined materials in China where they are unlikely to ever return to the US, the man who has the most visited wilderness area in the entire federal public lands system in his own district, is using that technicality to ignore the will of the American people.

But this is not just a BWCA thing. This is a public lands thing. Once they successfully use the CRA to reverse public lands management rules, they will use it everywhere. Their goal is to break the public land management system so they can take public lands out of your ownership. “Break it, then take it.” They need to be stopped here or every American’s birthright will be stolen by short-sighted and selfish people.

I listen to Hal Herring and his Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast. I’m a BHA member. They do a lot of advocacy for public land. Hal said something on this week’s podcast about the challenges faced by the BWCA. What he said is applicable to a lot of topics nowadays:

“I love it because we’re being asked who we want to be.”

Who do you want to be? Please take action.

Below: Some trumpeter swans in Rose Lake, August 2024. Probably undocumented.