Feds slap 20-year mining ban on land near Boundary Waters – by Dan Kraker (MPR News – January 26, 2023)

https://www.mprnews.org/

The U.S. Department of the Interior issued a 20-year mining moratorium Thursday on 225,000 acres of federal land near the Boundary Waters, dealing a further blow to the proposed Twin Metals mine near Ely, Minn. and other potential mines for copper, nickel and precious metals within the watershed of the canoe wilderness area.

The decision is the latest milestone in a long and contentious tug of war over mining near the popular wilderness area that has spanned more than six years and three presidential administrations.

President Obama first proposed withdrawing federal land from future mineral exploration and leasing within the watershed of the Boundary Waters near the end of his second term in 2016. The Trump administration then stopped the environmental review of that proposal, before it was restarted under the Biden administration in 2021.

The decision announced Monday followed more than a year of analysis by the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service of the potential environmental and cultural impacts of mining in the region upstream from the Boundary Waters, and the review of 225,000 public comments.

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