Episode Details

Senate Republicans voted 50-49 yesterday to hand the headwaters of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness to a Chilean mining company.

A multi-year Forest Service review drew 675,000 public comments, over 95 percent in favor of protection, and concluded sulfide-ore copper mining would cause irreversible harm.

Republicans used the Congressional Review Act, a procedural tool designed to kill regulations, to kill a wilderness protection for the first time in history.

The CRA’s poison pill means no future administration can issue substantially similar protections without a new act of Congress. They didn’t just open the door. They welded it shut.

According to More Than Just Parks , which has been tracking every attack, this was number 40 in 15 months - the Arctic Refuge, 45 million acres of national forest unlocked for chainsaws, two marine monuments thrown to commercial fishing fleets, a 211-mile mining road through a national park, and the Park Service hollowed out by 24 percent. No previous Congress has come close.

Donate to Save the Boundary Waters for the legal fight ahead. If you live in Minnesota, call your state legislators and demand permanent state protections for the Rainy River watershed. Every Minnesota Senate seat is on the ballot in November. Remember who did this. They are counting on you giving up. Don’t.