Conservation leaders who’ve been tracking the status of a resolution that could decide the fate of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness are now sounding the alarm. A vote that will either affirm or eliminate protections for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness will happen as early as Wednesday.
“We just got notice that there’s time being held on the floor [Wednesday] for the CRA resolution,” executive director of Save the Boundary Waters Ingrid Lyons said in a call to action from D.C. Tuesday evening. “So it’s not official that it will be voted on but it’s on the docket, it’s in the queue. Which makes sense, there’s only two weeks left here on the CRA. But we’re getting official word that the vote could be as soon as tomorrow, so, continue to call your senators. It’s go time.”
House Joint Resolution 140 passed the House of Representatives in January, but has since stalled in the Senate. It relied on an unprecedented use of the Congressional Review Act to overturn a 20-year mineral withdrawal enacted in 2023. The Minnesota Star-Tribune reported last month that there has been a lack of consensus among lawmakers over the issue.
Save the Boundary Waters declined to comment on whether the vote is moving forward now because enough votes have been secured to pass the resolution, or if the 60-day expiration on the resolution is forcing Senators to move forward anyway.
“[This vote] will decide the fate of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. This bill sells out America’s public lands to foreign mining interests — plain and simple,” Lyons said in a separate statement. “Support for H.J. Res. 140 hides behind ‘America First’ rhetoric, but in reality, this resolution risks one of our most cherished landscapes for a project that benefits foreign companies — not the American people. It sets a dangerous precedent nationwide for public lands, opening up more than 225,000 acres of protected federal land in the headwaters of the Boundary Waters and Voyageurs National Park to the threat of sulfide-ore copper mining.”
The U.S. House of Representatives narrowly passed HJR 140 this winter, which puts a copper-nickel mine on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness one step closer to reality. The House voted 214-208 in favor of overturning the BWCA’s current protections, which cover 225,504 acres in the Superior National Forest and center around the Rainy River Watershed that lies upstream of the BWCA.
Related: Trump Administration and Congress Are Attempting an ‘Unprecedented Maneuver’ to Roll Back Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Protections
“The Boundary Waters is the pinnacle of wild places,” Matthew Schultz with Sportsmen for the Boundary Waters told OL in January. “The chance of polluting a place like that to me is pretty crazy. It just doesn’t shake out.”
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