Boundary Waters Mine Vote Highlights Ryan Zinke’s Hypocrisy On Public Lands

Montana Congressperson whipping votes in support of toxic mine that threatens nation’s most popular Wilderness

“Today, the Boundary Waters faces one of the most serious threats in its history,” write famous hunting influencers/reluctant public lands advocates Ryan Callaghan and Steven Rinella in an op-ed in the Billings Gazette. But while they’re correct that today could be the beginning of the end for the unspoiled Wilderness, they fail to identify the reason for the threat: none other than their close friend and supposed public lands “champion,” Ryan Zinke. Let’s fix that.

Update 3:15pm Mountain Time: The house just passed the bill using the CRA to revoke the mining ban.

The House of Representatives is today voting on a measure that would use the Congressional Review Act to rollback a long-contested ban on the construction of a heavily polluting, toxic mining operation in the headwaters of the Boundary Water Canoe Area Wilderness.

According to Callaghan and Rinella, the Boundary Waters is, “…one of the last places in the Lower 48 where you can still find that kind of backcountry experience: cold, clean water you can drink from, grouse in the woods, and fish that seem to live in every lake.”

But the headwaters for the region also contains copper. That low-grade copper is locked in sulfide-ore, so the process of crushing that to extract the copper will expose the sulfide to oxygen and water, creating sulfuric acid. The Environmental Protection Agency has found the odds of that sulfuric acid polluting the Boundary Waters to be “highly likely.”

That acid mine drainage will occur underground even if it’s not visible from the surface, and will create a “perpetual pollution” source that will continue for centuries. When that reaches the Boundary waters, it will render the area’s water unsafe to drink. Longterm exposure to water polluted with sulfuric acid is so bad it can rot the teeth right of your mouth. Sulfuric acid also lowers the pH of the water sources it enters, and that then damages the gills of fish causing respiratory failure. The toxic aluminum it will leach from soil will disrupt fish reproduction, and reduce their food sources, which will likely lead to population collapse. Fish species most vulnerable to sulfuric acid pollution are popular game species like the lake trout and smallmouth bass, for which the Boundary Waters is famous. Fish exposed to sulfuric acid pollution are not safe to eat.

That result is neither unlikely, or exaggerated, it is inevitable. Plans for the mine include storing over 100 million tons of toxic waste on the shores of Birch Lake, waters from which flow directly into the Wilderness.

A 2018 study found, “The many streams, wetlands, lakes, and aquifers downstream of the proposed mine sites are massively interconnected. Consequently, contamination would be widespread, and damage from an accident would be uncontrollable.”

Pollution from the mine would flow from Minnesota into Canada. No technology currently exists or is in development that would be capable of eliminating this threat. 70 percent of Minnesotans oppose the mine’s construction.

This inevitable destruction of the Boundary Waters was enough for the Obama administration to cancel the mine’s lease in 2016, and begin the process of instituting a 20-year mining ban in the area.

Antofagasta, the Chilean parent company of the mine operator, set out to lobby the incoming Trump administration to get that lease restored and the ban reversed.

Here’s a letter they wrote to then-Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke in 2017:

Zinke would go on to order the largest reduction in public lands protections in history that same year, and in 2018 restored the Chilean company’s lease and cancelled the process that would have created the 20-year ban.

Why? “Interior Secretary Zinke says he wants to emulate Theodore Roosevelt but this shameful decision goes against everything Roosevelt stood for,” reads a statement Backcountry Hunters and Anglers issued in 2018. “This is clearly a Christmas present to a foreign mining company and the most anti-public lands representatives in Congress. It’s up to us to defend our public lands, waters and sporting heritage.”

Zinke was then fired by the President for rampant penny grifting later that same year. There were 18 separate investigations into different matters, but the primary one involved an effort to marginally increase the value of the home Zinke owns in Whitefish, the same home that Zinke mis-appropriated taxpayer funds to help fix up when he was in the Navy.

The Biden administration again cancelled the mine’s lease in 2022, and then instituted a 20-year ban on mining in the area, through 2043.

The whole situation is much messier than I’m describing here. It turned out that Jared Kushner and Ivanka lived in a $5.5 million Washington D.C mansion owned by the Chilean billionaire behind Antofagasta, where they may or may not have been paying rent. There were lawsuits and investigative reporting around undue influence and corruption. When Trump returned to power last year Congress set out to punish the environmental non-profits involved in fighting the project through bullshit investigations and threats of revoking their non-profit status. Follow those links if you’re interested in reading more.

I want to focus instead on the involvement of Ryan Zinke, who has set about attempting to repair his image with voters not through pro-public lands actions, but by lying in an attempt to take credit for stuff he’s had nothing to do with. And Callaghan and Rinella have been right there alongside him, platforming Zinke’s lies, and even giving him awards for stuff he hasn’t done.

I’ve written about this at length, but Zinke has put in a ton of effort to claim credit for removing Mike Lee and Steve Daines’ amendment that would have sold off 3.3 million acres of public land as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Those two guys are Senators and run the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The measure failed in that committee, with which Zinke, who serves in the House, has no involvement. Zinke also attempted to take credit for the failure of an earlier provision that would have sold a half-million acres that was considered by the House Natural Resources Committee. Zinke does not serve on that committee, and was not involved in the vote that defeated the measure.

Yet, Rinella was quick to repeat Zinke’s lies. According to a press release issued by Zinke, Rinella is quoted as saying, “Last month, a provision was inserted into the House’s version of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill mandating that the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service sell a half-million acres of public land in Nevada and Utah. That proposal was eventually removed (heroically, in my view) thanks to Ryan Zinke, a second-term Republican congressman from Montana, who campaigned on a promise to keep ‘public lands in public hands.’”

Both Rinella and Callaghan have had Zinke as a guest on their respective podcasts, in which they have allowed the Congressperson to repeat his lies without fact check or question.

Last May, Rinella hosted an awards ceremony for the Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Partnership in which Zinke was given that organization’s highest honor. Also speaking at that event was my neighbor K.C. Walsh, who managed to keep a straight face while claiming, “Ryan Zinke has been a champion for keeping public lands in public hands.”

Let’s jump back to today. The House is voting on a measure introduced by Rep. Pete Stauber (R-MN) that would employ the Congressional Review Act to repeal the ban preventing the mine’s construction. Stauber is the same Congressperson responsible for threatening to revoke the non-profit status of those organizations opposing the mine’s construction.

Republicans in Congress have enthusiastically embraced the CRA as a tool for achieving their goals on public lands because it allows them to undo environmental protections with a simple majority, avoiding the filibuster in the Senate. But, as I’ve explained at length, this unprecedented use of the CRA also challenges the legality of the entire permitting process. They’ve already used the CRA to render every permit issued as part of a resource management plan written since 1996 by the Bureau of Land Management legally questionable, this will be the first vote to do the same for areas managed by the Forest Service.

Both Bloomberg Government and E&E News are reporting that Ryan Zinke is “whipping” votes in support of the measure. That’s the process of pressuring fellow law makers to vote as a single block in favor of bills they may not otherwise support. If this passes and goes to the Senate, we will have Ryan Zinke to thank.

But in their Billings Gazette op-ed, Callaghan and Rinella make no mention of Zinke. It looks like E&E News also directly asked Callaghan about Zinke’s involvement, without a quotable response.

Let’s take that one step further. If we lose the nation’s most popular Wilderness area to sulfuric acid pollution, part of the reason for that is because two popular hunting influencers helped the most corrupt politician in Congress rehabilitate his image with both voters and within his own caucus. And by failing to call Zinke out for this, or attach blame for it to him, Callaghan and Rinella are empowering Zinke to cause even more harm in the future.

Thankfully, there are voices prepared to hold the people responsible for threatening the future of America’s public lands, clean air and water, and abundant biodiversity to account.

“Zinke’s vision of public lands ownership is laid bare with this vote,” Ryan Busse, who is running to unseat Zinke tells me. “He wants huge corporations to rape and pillage our wild places for profit. He’s trying to hoodwink people in Montana into thinking he cares about conserving public lands, but it’s plain to see that all Zinke cares about is money for the industries that fund him and his campaign.”

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