Ecological-economic contextNortheast 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. 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 FindingsOur 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:
outcomes
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the regionSt. 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
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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
-Yvon Chouinard, founder of the outdoor company, Patagonia
-Land Tawney , CEO of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers
Header Source-By Chad Fennell (Flickr: BWCA - FALL 08) [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons