Ecological-economic context

​Northeast Minnesota’s “Arrowhead Region” is home to one of the nation’s most visited wilderness areas, has a year-round economy built on recreation, tourism, retirement, and entrepreneurship, but also copper and nickel in sulfide ore.
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​Public debate in the Arrowhead has focused on the promised benefits of allowing sulfide ore mining to proceed within the watershed of the region’s iconic Boundary Waters Canoe Area, while consideration of cost has been all but non-existent.

Key Findings

Our study for Northeast Minnesotans for Wilderness, a small grassroots organization, has brought costs into public view, including our estimate of a billion dollars or more in lost tourism spending, personal income, and property value in the three-county Arrowhead study region:

• $288 million in lost visitor spending each year that would otherwise support
  • 4,490 local jobs
  • $76 million in residents’ income
  • $31 million in state and local taxes, and
  • $181 million in proprietor’s income and business-to-business transactions
• 5,066 to 22,791 lost jobs
• $509 million in lost property value

outcomes

• Research results cited in 5 articles on the Boundary Waters region since 2017
• Report referenced in comment letters to USDA and Minnesota representatives in Congress 

the region

St. Louis, Cook, and Lake Counties make up the Arrowhead Region of Minnesota. This region boasts the natural beauty of forests and deeply interconnected streams, lakes, wetlands and groundwater. It is home to  Voyageurs National Park, the Superior National Forest, and across the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

Resources

• Technical Report detailing trends in the Arrowhead region's economy and the potential effects of sulfide-ore copper mining 
• Comment letter to the USDA Forest Service regarding the proposed withdrawal of land from the federal mineral leasing program
• Review of claims that mining would have positive economic impacts
• New York Times Magazine article on the issue, citing our results
  • Our review of the Times' article, what it missed, and what it mischaracterized​​​
• Review of Citizen Input to the United States Forest Service regarding withdrawal of certain lands from the federal mineral leasing program

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This is the most visited wilderness area in the nation, and local communities rely on the nearly 4,500 jobs in the area generated by the outdoors recreation industry. Across Minnesota, 140,000 people are employed in outdoor recreation, but they apparently don’t carry as much weight with Zinke as the deep-pocketed mining companies.
-Yvon Chouinard, founder of the outdoor company, Patagonia​
-Land Tawney , CEO of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers

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See also

National Forests in North Carolina | Ecosystem Service Value

Maryland | Costs of Natural Gas Development

National Monuments | Citizen Input Analysis

Header Source-By Chad Fennell (Flickr: BWCA - FALL 08) [CC BY 2.0  (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons