"The list of elected officials who have stood strong for the Boundary Waters is long, but the threats the wilderness faces today mandate that we must once again vote for Boundary Waters champions," former Gov. Mark Dayton writes. (Bob Timmons/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

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At a rally this summer in St. Cloud, Donald Trump promised that if elected, he’d reverse the Biden/Harris administration’s historic 20-year Boundary Waters protections in the first 10 minutes in office, promising to open up the iconic landscape to industrial mining pollution. That would be a disaster.

Minnesota’s canoe country is an intact 1.1 million acres of boreal forest, lakes, rivers and wetlands that are home to loons, eagles, wolves and lynx. It is America’s largest wilderness area east of the Rockies and a rare, unpolluted, interconnected watery ecosystem where paddlers are known to dip their cups into the middle of lakes and drink directly from the waters.

Today, we enjoy the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) because generations of people have fought to protect it, in part by electing champions who ensured that the landscape would remain intact and ecologically healthy. The list of elected officials who have stood strong for the Boundary Waters is long, but the threats the wilderness faces today mandate that we must once again vote for Boundary Waters champions.

Election Day is just days away, and as Minnesotans, we must band together to protect our state’s crown jewel. This Tuesday, you can vote for candidates committed to permanently protecting the Boundary Waters up and down the ticket.

Let’s start at the top: Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is a Boundary Waters champion, having worked diligently within the Biden administration to champion and enact the most protective measures for the BWCAW in 45 years. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, her running mate, has also been a strong supporter.

On the other hand, Republican nominee Trump is a grave threat to America’s natural landscapes. During his earlier term as president, Trump deliberately dismantled years of progress made toward protecting the Boundary Waters:

He reinstated old mineral leases. His administration issued unlawful mineral leases to benefit the wealthiest family in South America. This was a public lands giveaway to a foreign mining conglomerate. It’s clear whose interest Trump was serving, and it was not that of the American people.
Trump slashed environmental review and ignored scientific and economic evidence about the risks of copper mining.

In 2018, he stopped the 20-year mineral withdrawal application, breaking his promise to go complete it. This was after U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue testified in Congress in front of U.S. Rep Betty McCollum of Minnesota, assuring her that the Trump administration would proceed with the two-year, science-based study of whether dangerous sulfide-ore copper mining should be permitted on federal lands immediately upstream of the BWCAW.
Under pressure to release the study, the Trump administration produced a 60-page document that — but for the cover page — was entirely redacted.
Then Trump bragged about it at a rally in Duluth, saying, “We rescinded the federal withdrawal in Superior National Forest.”

Anti-Boundary Waters forces are relentless.

Chilean mining conglomerate Antofagasta has spent millions in attempts to reverse the protections we’ve fought so hard to secure. This year alone, it has spent almost half a million dollars to lobby the U.S. government for its Twin Metals project near the Boundary Waters.
Project 2025, a “battle plan” for the first 180 days of a second Trump administration, explicitly outlines a plan to reopen the Boundary Waters watershed to toxic copper mining. The only mention of Minnesota in the entire 920-page document is about reversing protections for the BWCAW.
U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber of Minnesota and Trump share a desire to destroy the Boundary Waters in the name of profits for a foreign mining conglomerate. Stauber has been laser-focused on opening the Boundary Waters watershed to copper mining.

Since Trump left office, considerable progress has been made in protecting America’s most popular wilderness from toxic sulfide-ore copper mining.

In 2022, the Biden-Harris administration canceled two federal mineral leases that were unlawfully renewed in 2019 under the Trump administration.
Last year, the Biden-Harris administration issued Public Land Order 7917, which banned toxic copper mining on 225,504 acres of land in the BWCAW watershed for 20 years. This order came after the U.S. Forest Service published a comprehensive scientific review that found that sulfide-ore copper mining would pollute the Boundary Waters in ways that could not be fixed or mitigated.

Unfortunately, these safeguards are only temporary and could be swiftly reversed in a second Trump term, underscoring the urgency of voting for pro-Boundary Waters leaders on Tuesday.

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Minnesotans cherish the Boundary Waters. Nearly 70% of Minnesotans from all backgrounds support the protection of the Boundary Waters from toxic mining and are unwilling to sell the wilderness to the copper mining industry. It is our collective responsibility not to let Trump destroy this unique wilderness and unravel the hard-fought protections that so many have worked tirelessly to secure.

This election offers us a chance to prevent the transformation of our one-of-a-kind Boundary Waters watershed into an industrial mining zone. By voting for candidates who value wilderness preservation, we can secure the future of the Boundary Waters for generations to come.

Once we lose the pristine Boundary Waters to toxic pollution, we lose it forever. Let us not squander this opportunity to safeguard one of America’s greatest natural wonders.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Rep. McCollum especially deserve our support. To see the complete list of endorsed Boundary Waters Champions at the state and federal levels, see BoundaryWatersAction.org.

Mark Dayton, a Democrat, represented Minnesota in the U.S. Senate from 2001 to 2007 and was governor from 2011 to 2019.

Mark Dayton: How bad would a second Trump presidency be for the Boundary Waters? Catastrophic.

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Mark Dayton

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