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The Biden Administration bans mining for 20 years in a giant watershed near the Minnesota Frontier Waters Canoe District, in the president’s latest attempt to deliver on conservation promises that will define the future of America’s wilderness.

The move, announced Thursday, extends a year-old temporary blockade to mining copper, nickel and other hard minerals that the Trump administration has tried to allow near the Canadian border. Officials said they determined that the potential toxic leaching from mining would be too hazardous to nature, local Native American communities, and the growing recreational economy.

According to the Ministry of the Interior, Frontier Waters is the most visited wilderness area in the country. And Thursday’s decision will affect 225,000 acres of federal land and water in the Rainy River watershed, which is adjacent to the wilderness northwest of Lake Superior.

It comes the day after the administration took action to protect Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, and as it faces other decisions over bitter disputes over land in Alaska and Nevada. The Biden administration has pledged to put aside tribal sacred sites and preserve 30 percent of America’s land and waters by 2030, but has come under fire for how to balance that pressure with demand for oil, renewable energy and minerals.

“The Department of the Interior takes seriously our commitment to protecting public lands and waters on behalf of all Americans,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement. “Protecting a place like Frontier Waters is key to maintaining the health of the watershed and its surrounding wildlife, maintaining our tribal trust and contractual obligations, and growing the local recreation economy.”

Proponents of mining in the region say it could be a key domestic source of materials needed for President Biden’s promised cleaner energy transition. Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of Chilean mining conglomerate Antofagasta, held leases there that the administration canceled last year and accused the administration of trying to circumvent the law to stop the project for political gain.

In a statement Thursday, the mining leader said the decision was disappointing given the Biden administration’s stated goals for “electrification, energy transition and supply chain security.”

“At a time when demand for minerals such as copper, nickel and cobalt is skyrocketing for use in electric vehicles, solar and wind infrastructure, the administration is seizing hundreds of thousands of acres of land that could provide American manufacturers with abundant sources of those same resources. . minerals,” said Rich Nolan, President and CEO of the National Mining Association.

The administration’s environmental program has led to similar clashes with oil and mining companies in Alaska and solar energy developers in Nevada. He is facing decisions that many expect in a matter of days on the watershed of Alaska’s Bristol Bay and 33,000 acres around Mount Avi Kwa Ame in Nevada.

He also committed to Alaskan leaders this month to complete an environmental review of ConocoPhillips Willow’s multibillion-dollar oil project, which is opposed by climate activists. That deadline is Tuesday, and the administration has signaled it may allow drilling there, in a smaller area.

Current and former administration officials believe it will be difficult for the federal government to violate the company’s long-term leases. Such legal hurdles are forcing the administration to procrastinate on large sections of its climate agenda and limiting how far it can go to honor Biden’s pledges to block oil drilling in the Arctic and other federal territories.

“They had legitimate difficulties with a divided country and Congress,” said John Leshy, a law professor who served as a solicitor for the Interior under President Bill Clinton and wrote a letter to the federal government to curb fossil fuel leasing. “They are calling on people – in state government, in the private sector, at all levels – to pay more attention to conservation. I think overall it works.”

Biden pledges to honor tribes by protecting public lands in Nevada

Administration officials did not respond to questions about the timing of their moves and whether there is now a strategy to speed them up. But in recent days, they have stressed that they are committed to delivering on the environmental promises Biden made at the start of his administration.

A spokesman for the interior noted on Thursday that the ministry had already canceled Twin Metals’ leases, making it easier for Haaland to order the protection of about 1.1 million acres of Boundary Waters to take effect. It said leases had been incorrectly renewed under the Trump administration due to inadequate environmental analysis that bypassed the US Forest Service, which manages the area.

High-ranking officials of the department view the wilderness as a unique place, “irreplaceable” and easily damaged due to the huge and fragile links between all the waterways pitted in the region. In 2021, the Biden administration launched a scientific analysis that showed mining could cause irreparable damage to the region’s nature and culture, officials said Thursday. Several examples have been found over the past decade where containment efforts have failed and other mine leaks in the region have caused such damage, according to a spokesman for the Ministry of Agriculture.

Each year, Boundary Waters attracts about 150,000 Boy Scouts and other visitors looking to canoe, fish and connect with nature. The glaciers that have torn the region over the past 2 million years have left behind rugged terrain that is now inhabited by wolves, elks, lynxes, beavers, bald eagles and peregrine falcons.

“Acid pollution from sulphide mines up to 100 miles away threatens the waters of the park and everyone who visits it. Even small amounts of this pollution are detrimental to public health,” Christine Goepfert, campaign director for the National Park Conservation Association, said in a statement. “Banning mining in the region’s valuable frontier waters will protect the park’s broader ecosystem now and for years to come.”

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