One of the
great challenges we are passing on to our children is figuring out
how our relationship with the natural world, i.e. Nature, Outside,
the Wild, fits into our current societal scheme. While we are all on
our own path towards reestablishing that connection individually, as
a whole we have many incongruities between the way we think of the
natural world and the way we treat it. One place where those
incongruities are most visible is when industry (usually resource
extraction) takes place in, on or adjacent to preserved public lands.
This is not to make a judgment as to the value of those resources,
we are after all taking a solar power kit on this trip and the demand
for copper in the alternative energy industry (like solar panels and
batteries) is one key reason for the intended development of the
Pebble Mine in Alaska which threatens the health of one of the
world's greatest fisheries in Bristol Bay and its tributaries. So
while the issue of development /progress vs. preservation of
wilderness may not have a clean answer, we are not tackling head on
the glitches between us and rest of the life on Earth.
Those
glitches in ethos become evident anywhere our modern
civilization comes in contact/conflict with places and people who
present a barrier to our system's need for natural resources,
undeveloped land or locations of social/economic/political
importance. We are taking actions that prove our understanding of the
importance of a sound global ecosystem- through the preservation of
undeveloped land, reestablishing the populations of endangered
species and legitimizing the idea that not only do we need an
intact global ecosystem for our physical and psychological health but
that we also have the ability to alter the function of the global
ecosystem in ways that threaten our current understanding of life on
Earth. But for all of our actions to save, there are just as many
that will threaten any gain we have made in the past. The Boundary
Waters Wilderness, just like the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, is now
subject to that tension where
wilderness and progress conflict.
There are plans to develop a copper-nickle mine just outside of the Boundary Water's southern boundary using a method of mining called “sulfide mining.” Essentially this process involves digging up a bunch of Earth, in this case sulfide-rich Earth, separating out the copper and nickel, and disposing of the waste ore. The problem is that when that sulfide rich ore is exposed to the environment, sulfuric acid can be created and that is bad on the good-bad scale. This process can lead to water pollution, ecosystem disruption and a loss in biodiversity. Now, whatever side of the fence you come down on, pro mining or anti mining, it is important to be knowledgeable about issues that impact our public lands.
Learn more-
Friends of the Boundary Waters:
Minnesota Department of Natural Resources: http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/volunteer/julaug12/nonferrous.html
Minnesota Public Radio:
The
Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness was created in 1964 and
includes over 1,000,000 acres (1,500 square miles) of rivers, lakes,
taiga/mixed conifer- hardwood forests, moose, wolf, trout and exposed
bedrock as old as any on Earth. All of this and no permanent signs
of humans- no roads, buildings, or infrastructure like telephone
poles or radio towers. There are campsites with fire grates,
latrines and there is the usual detritus that seems to follow humans
everywhere we go- pop cans, plastic bags, flip flops (just the left
one's though- if you ever see a lone flip flop I almost guarantee it
is a left, not sure why no one loses the right ones...) but none of
these are permanent and the BW remains, as the Wilderness Act says
“as
an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by
man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”
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