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Letter to the Echo At the Dec. 9 Joint Powers meeting in Ely, I was pleased to have an opportunity to address issues important to our community. I asked our public officials to put at the forefront of consideration this: We live in a 4.3 million- acre Quetico Superior ecosystem that is primarily composed of public lands in four protected landscapes – the Superior National Forest, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (part of the Superior National Forest), Quetico Park, and Voyageurs National Park. This ecosystem is the heart of our community and the heart of the North American continent and makes northeastern Minnesota a great place to live, work, and play.
I asked that public actions include the following: First, support financially strong public education. Ely has an excellent independent public school system. I urged public officials to complete the U.S. Forest Service acquisition of school trust lands located within the Boundary Waters. Led by Congressman Jim Oberstar in 1997, all ten Members of the Minnesota Congressional delegation (7 Democrats and 3 Republicans) asked the Agriculture Secretary to purchase these lands with funds from the federal Land & Water Conservation Fund. Although the purchase was stymied over the years by local anti-public land sentiment, Congress has now appropriated the funds for the purchase and the DNR and the U.S. Forest Service have agreed to proceed. Completing this purchase will put this money to work for Minnesota students. All money generated by school trust lands, whether income from leases or outright sale, is deposited in the Permanent School Trust Fund, which distributes funds for public education throughout the state each year. Sale of the school trust lands within the Boundary Waters to the federal government would result in a financial benefit to Minnesota’s children vastly in excess of any earnings from exchanged land. Nancy McReady likes to claim that a sale is not authorized by law. In fact, the sale is authorized by the federal Weeks Act, the Land & Water Conservation Act, and Congress’s appropriation of funds for the sale (which Minnesota school fund officials are eager to receive for our schools).
Second, I urged support for St. Louis, Lake, and Cook Counties. Senator Tina Smith introduced legislation to increase the amount of funding these three counties receive annually under the 1948 Thye-Blatnik Act to levels authorized by a 2008 appraisal. This would add about $2 million per year combined to the budgets of St. Louis, Lake, and Cook Counties. I urged support for passage in both Houses of Congress. (Thanks to Senator Smith, the legislation passed the U.S. Senate in late December. Congressman Stauber deemed this bill not a priority and failed to push for passage in the U.S. House. It is not clear when another opportunity will arise to fix the appraisal problem.)
Third, I noted:
• Ely has excellent medical professionals and facilities; keep them strong
• Ely and northeastern Minnesota would welcome
• more housing affordable to families and workers, financial assistance from Minnesota Housing, and more workers skilled in construction trades
• additional high quality and reliable childcare facilities
• additional reliable highspeed internet Fourth, I asked that public officials take no action that would pollute, exhaust, or damage our fresh air, clean water, abundant wildlife, and magnificent boreal forests. Embrace our public lands as local residents do.
Finally, I addressed remarks made by some public officials and staff. Congressman Stauber’s staff person outlined Stauber’s priorities, all anti-nature. His priorities: revoke the 20-year mining ban on federal lands in the headwaters of the Boundary Waters; deliver to a foreign mining company federal mineral leases for lands next to and upstream of the Wilderness; block the federal acquisition of school trust lands within the Boundary Waters, a move that would ultimately cost hundreds of millions of dollars in public school funding; and delist the wolf so that it can be trapped and shot. Minnesota Representative Roger Skraba jumped into the wolf discussion to say that he supports reducing the wolf population threshold in the state’s management plan by 900 wolves so that trapping – Skraba’s preferred killing method – could commence immediately if delisting were to occur.
All of Stauber’s priorities would reduce the quality of life we enjoy in northeastern Minnesota and fail to represent our values. Stauber and Skraba have learned nothing from the groundbreaking research of the Voyageur Wolf Project, or the importance of the International Wolf Center to our community, or the role of wolves in our ecosystem. Stauber ignores the overwhelming scientific evidence that copper mining in the headwaters of the Boundary Waters would be devastating. On Dec. 18, 2024, the U.S. Forest Service reiterated its science-based conclusion that copper mining in the headwaters of the Boundary Waters presents “an unacceptable, inherent risk of serious and irreparable harm to the BWCAW natural resources.” The Forest Service has held this position since 2016, across three administrations (Obama, Trump, and Biden).
Vote counts from the November election strongly suggest that Stauber’s war on the natural world is not what the majority of people who live near the Boundary Waters want. Stauber lost by a substantial margin in St. Louis, Lake, and Cook Counties.
Becky Rom Ely, MN
