Forest Service (USFS) lands within three miles of Boundary Waters. In 2012, Twin Metals requested renewals for two mineral leases to mine for copper and nickel on U.S. 11 The company has also been implicated in a number of bribery and corruption scandals in its home country, including allegations involving a high-ranking Chilean cabinet minister and a questionable $10-million-dollar loan to the daughter-in-law of the Chilean president. Since 2016, Twin Metals has spent nearly $1 million lobbying the Trump administration in order to gain access to public lands near Boundary Waters. President Donald Trump’s daughter and son-in-law rent their $5.5 million Washington, D.C., mansion from Luksic for $15,000 a month-a relationship that raises conflict of interest questions. One of those threats comes from Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of Antofagasta PLC, a Chilean mining company owned by billionaire Andrόnico Luksic, who is also Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s landlord. While Boundary Waters is protected from development within its borders, it remains vulnerable to threats in the watershed in which it lies. 8 Home to gray wolves, black bears, and moose-as well as fish such as largemouth bass and sturgeon-Boundary Waters has more than 1,200 miles of canoe routes, 12 hiking trails, and more than 2,000 designated campsites, attracting about 155,000 visitors annually-more than any other U.S. 7 It stretches nearly 200 miles along the U.S.-Canada border and is contiguous with Canada’s Quetico Provincial Park, which is also managed as a wilderness area. Covering more than 1 million acres, Boundary Waters is the largest wilderness area east of the Rocky Mountains and north of the Everglades. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, one of the country’s greatest natural marvels, is located within the Superior National Forest in Minnesota. Threatening the country’s most visited wilderness area The administration’s brazen disregard for transparency, science, and process in the Boundary Waters issue may ultimately be its undoing, but until the courts weigh in, this incredible wilderness system remains at serious risk of irrevocable damage from the sulfide-ore mining at its doorstep. 5 The average success rate of previous administrations in such cases is 70 percent. 4 This unsound approach to decision-making has been recognized as such in court, where the Trump administration has only a 6 percent success rate on cases related to the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs the way agencies develop and issue regulations. The Boundary Waters case is emblematic of the Trump administration’s modus operandi: bypass the regulatory process by shortcutting scientific assessment, ignoring local opposition, and bending the law. coastline to rolling back protections for national monuments where coal, oil, and uranium companies have expressed interest, the Trump administration’s energy dominance agenda has threatened public lands across multiple fronts. From proposing oil and gas drilling off nearly every U.S. McCollum and Secretary Perdue highlights the Trump administration’s efforts to remove protections from the wilderness’s watershed and its broader assault on public lands and waters on behalf of extractive industries. McCollum maintained that by stopping the study, he had “started a roller coaster of events that will lead to, possibly, the destruction of these pristine waters.” 2 “Twenty months of collecting public input, 20 months of science-based assessment, and all you released was a one-page press release,” objected McCollum, calling the press release “completely inadequate.” Previously, during a 2017 Interior-Environment appropriations hearing, Perdue promised McCollum that a thorough two-year study would be conducted and completed. 1 The study was canceled 20 months into the 24-month review. The congresswoman lambasted Perdue for the last-minute cancelation of a two-year study meant to determine if mining should be allowed on the doorstep of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, the nation’s most visited wilderness area. Betty McCollum (D-MN) faced off against Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue during a hearing of the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee.
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